Drawing the Copyright Map

The passage of two new global treaties on copyright in Geneva -- one on written material, one on sound recordings -- goes a long step toward laying the groundwork for applying international law to the Internet's international activity. The 160 countries that agreed to the treaties still must pass legislation of their own to implement and enforce them, so their actual effect on the Net is hard to gauge. But the action taken at the World Intellectual Property Organization meeting was notable also for the degree to which domestic interest groups -- nonprofit and educational groups as well as companies -- were able to influence a process that many had feared would turn out to be an end run around opposition at home.

One question going into the Geneva meeting was whether the voices of U.S. domestic interests would be adequately heard there. The answer seems to be a tentative yes, with no small role being played in the transatlantic lobbying by the Internet itself. The conference's best decision was to table indefinitely an ill-advised proposal for a treaty to create a new intellectual property right in electronic databases. Critics also blocked several clauses that might have criminalized types of copying that are considered legal when done on paper -- for instance, photocopying an article to send to a friend. (The delegates adopted language that protects the right to "fair use" of copyright material, a turnaround from earlier drafts.)

These moves are signs that lobbying has begun making the transition from domestic to global. That the critics' worst fears did not materialize is good news for the thriving U.S. information and telecommunications industries, not to mention commercial and noncommercial users of the new medium. Many of the more interesting and hard-fought questions about the future shape of electronic property rights remain to be worked out at home. Many service providers particularly are concerned about the treaties' refusal to protect them from liability for infringements by people using their services; they argue, with considerable logic, that a service provider forced to vet all e-mail messages or electronic transactions would have to charge prohibitive prices for the service.

As usual, this is a matter of what parallels or definitions lawmakers choose to adopt: Are these providers entitled to phone-company-style protection, or are they a new kind of beast altogether? But the Geneva treaties did not, as feared, close off those questions before they could be asked. There is room, and need, for scrutiny to continue.