Proposed Law Attacks Copyright Minefield

In a House subcommittee room today, lawmakers begin the task of trying to adopt centuries-old copyright practices to the age of the Internet. Before them is a compromise bill that would allow artists and authors to sue on-line service companies that carry pirated material.

The bill attempts -- how successfully is not yet clear -- to settle a long-running dispute that pits the likes of Walt Disney Co. and music and book publishers against such on-line network operators as America Online Inc., Bell Atlantic Corp. and MCI Communications Corp.

It's among the most difficult legal issues in cyberspace, the ever-growing electronic world of linked computers. The technology makes it possible for millions of people to "post" pirated versions of books, songs or movies for others to copy. But when that happens, whom do you punish? The people who post the material or the operators of the on-line networks on which the posting occurs?

Copyright owners have long argued that it's impractical to take legal action against everybody who puts a copy of a protected work on a "home page" of the World Wide Web, the Internet's graphical sector. So it's logical, they say, to go after the on-line services that give consumers access to the material.

Steve Metalitz, an attorney representing copyright owners, said that "copyright owners always expected they'd have most of the burden" of enforcing their copyrights. "But it's very important to them to retain the option of going to court" against on-line operators, he said.

The service companies contend it would be impossible for them to monitor and enforce copyrights. Said Bill Burrington, assistant general counsel for America Online: "We just don't want to be responsible for potentially all 5 million" of his company's subscribers.

U.S. copyright laws already protect original ideas from being duplicated without the creators' consent, whether reproduced on the Internet or published in some more traditional form (there are exceptions for "fair use," such as copying for research or teaching).

And since 1988, people who create copyrighted material no longer need to register their work, or use that familiar "C" with a circle around it, to prove a copyright.

But the explosion of the Internet has tested the practicality of today's copyright laws. Anyone with a computer and a modem can, for example, download for free sound samples from the BBC television show "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" from a World Wide Web site, or film clips of "Return of the Jedi" from a home page in Denmark.

The legislation up for a vote today would formally extend traditional copyright protections to all electronic transmissions. It would make it illegal to circumvent any technology that serves to protect copyrighted material.

Those matters are largely uncontroversial -- they were first proposed in a Clinton administration "white paper" in September. That's not true of the issue of liability for service companies.

Months of negotiation between the opposing sides in the industry have made some headway toward a compromise. Copyright owners and on-line companies have agreed to a "quick kill" requirement: Owners would have an obligation to notify on-line providers when they become aware of a copyright infringement. Once notified, a provider would have to remove infringing material from its network within a specified period or face liability.

But on the eve of the committee vote there is still disagreement over copyright owners' right to sue on-line service providers even if they do comply with quick-kill rules. An amendment to be offered today by bill sponsor Rep. Carlos J. Moorhead (R-Calif.) would give them this option, but would limit damages to $1,000 for unintentional violations. Intentional violators would face sentences of up to three years in prison or a $250,000 fine.

In a key concession to service providers, the amendment specifies that a company acting as a "mere conduit" for information could not be sued. That satisfies many on-line companies, sources said, though lobbyists representing companies that make software used when tapping into the Web, such as Netscape Communications Corp., want to be included in the definition of "mere conduit."