Record Companies Seek Internet Copyright Treaty

The world's major record companies, battling to preserve their revenue against the high-tech information age revolution, today called for a new treaty to protect copyrights on the Internet.

Industry officials urged the adoption of new legislation at a United Nations conference on intellectual property and copyrights starting here Monday, but also admitted their impotence in controlling the tide of new digital technology.

Philippe Kern, a senior official of the Dutch record company PolyGram NV, said rules had to be rewritten because new technologies now allowed consumers of popular music to pull audio off the Internet and the electronic marketplace.

He said record producers risked losing billions of dollars because of reproduction on the Internet with digital technology as well as the emergence of a new electronic marketplace.

"People have access to works with no reward to copyright holders. This is unacceptable," Kern told a news conference. "We are simply asking for the right to negotiate the price for the use of our music through online information systems."

The gathering starting on Monday and due to last three weeks is in the form of a diplomatic conference sponsored by the U.N.'s World Intellectual Property Organization (WI\PO).

Its agenda includes completion and adoption of three new treaties -- on protection of literary and artistic works, on the rights of performers and the producers of phonographs, and on intellectual property rights in respect to databases.

Intellectual property is big business for the industry and its copyright owners -- authors, composers and publishers.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which is made up of about 1,100 record producers in more than 70 countries, says the global music business, worth $40 billion in retail sales in 1995, could lose $2 billion in the coming years in Europe alone due to electronic delivery of music.

The IFPI's legal affairs chief, Lewis Flacks, told the news conference: "You need a core of intellectual property rights recognized by a treaty so there is a fair playing field."

"Arrangements are needed between Internet providers and copyright owners on networks to provide confidentiality and security," Flacks said.

Copyright law confers two main rights -- to authorize reproduction and to authorize the distribution of those copies. It makes a distinction between reproduction for public use, which can be done only with the rights-holder's permission, and private use, which sometimes allows users access to less information.

But the new digital age challenges traditional notions of both reproduction and distribution of music, specialists say.

If music companies are unable to control piracy, how will they control copyright on the Internet, where the pirate and the customer can often be the same person, the specialists ask.

Current copyright law is based upon national boundaries -- the right to distribute copies of a compact disc in one country does not allow those copies to be sold in another.

But in the new, borderless world of the Internet, millions of people around the world can have access to the works -- anyone can make high-quality copies and distribute digitized work online.