Strong Copyright + DRM + Weak Net Neutrality = Digital Dystopia? Charles W. Bailey Jr. Three critical issues—a dramatic expansion of the scope, low-cost digital activities with the global Internet as their duration, and punitive nature of copyright laws; the abil- distribution medium. Not to say that print and conven- tional media are dead, of course, but it is clear that their ity of Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems to era of dominance is waning. The future is digital. lock-down digital content in an unprecedented fashion; Nor is it to say that entertainment companies (e.g., film, and the erosion of Net neutrality, which ensures that all music, radio, and television companies) and information Internet traffic is treated equally—are examined in detail companies (e.g., book, database, and serial publishers) have ceded the digital-content battlefield to the upstarts. and their potential impact on libraries is assessed. How Quite the contrary. legislatures, the courts, and the commercial marketplace High-quality, thousand-page-per-volume scientific jour- treat these issues will strongly influence the future of nals and Hollywood blockbusters cannot be produced for digital information for good or ill. pennies, even with digital wizardry. Information and enter- tainment companies still have an important role to play, and, even if they didn’t, they hold the copyrights to a significant Editor's Note : This article was submitted in honor of the chunk of our cultural heritage. ITAL fortieth anniversaries of LITA and . Entertainment and information companies have under- stood for some time that they must adapt to the digital logs. Digital photo and video sharing. Podcasts. environment or die, but this change has not always been Rip/Mix/Burn. Tagging. Vlogs. Wikis. These buzz- easy, especially when it involves concocting and embracing B new business models. Nonetheless, they intend to thrive words point to a fundamental social change fueled by cheap personal computers (PCs) and servers, the and prosper—and to do whatever it takes to succeed. As Internet and its local wired/wireless feeder networks, and they should, since they have an obligation to their share- powerful, low-cost software. Citizens have morphed from holders to do so. passive media consumers to digital-media producers and The thing about the future is that it is rooted in the publishers. past. Culture, even digital culture, builds on what has Libraries and scholars have their own set of buzzwords: gone before. Unconstrained access to past works helps digital libraries, digital presses, e-prints, institutional re- determine the richness of future works. Inversely, when positories, and open-access (OA) journals, to name a few. past works are inaccessible except to a privileged minority, They connote the same kind of change: a democratiza- future works are impoverished. tion of publishing and media production using digital This brings us to a second trend that stands in opposi- technology. tion to the first. Put simply, it is the view that intellectual It appears that we are on the brink of an exciting new works are property; that this property should be protected era of Internet innovation: a kind of digital utopia. Gary with the full force of civil and criminal law; that creators Flake of Microsoft has provided one striking vision of have perpetual, transferable property rights; and that what could be (with a commercial twist) in a presentation contracts, rather than copyright law, should govern the entitled “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the use of intellectual works. Imminent Internet Singularity,” and there are many other A third trend is also at play: the growing use of Digital visions of possible future Internet advances.1 Rights Management (DRM) technologies. When intel- When did this metamorphosis begin? It depends on lectual works were in paper (or other tangible forms), who you ask. Let’s say the late 1980s, when the Internet they could only be controlled at the object-ownership or began to get serious traction and an early flowering of object-access levels (a library controlling the circulation of a noncommercial digital publishing occurred. copy of a book is an example of the second case). Physical In the subsequent twenty-odd years, publishing and possession of a work, such as a book, meant that the user media production went from being highly centralized, had full use of it (i.e., the user could read the entire book capital-intensive analog activities with limited and well- and photocopy pages from it). When works are in digital defined distribution channels, to being diffuse, relatively form and are protected by some types of DRM, this may no longer be true. For example, a user may only be able to view a single chapter from a DRM-protected e-book and may not be able to print it. The fourth and final trend deals with how the Internet functions at its most fundamental level. The Internet was designed to be content-, application-, and hardware-neu- Charles W. Bailey Jr. ([email protected]) is tral. As long as certain standards were met, the network Assistant Dean for Digital Library Planning and Development at did not discriminate. One type of content was not given University of Houston Libraries. preferential delivery speed over another. One type of 116 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND LIBRARIES | SEPTEMBER 2006 content was not charged for delivery while another was be accorded the same rights and protections resident in all free. One type of content was not blocked (at least by the other property owners in the nation.”4 network) while another was unhindered. In recent years, network neutrality has come under attack. Types of works covered The collision of these trends has begun in courts, leg- islatures, and the marketplace. It is far from over. As we When the Copyright Act of 1790 was enacted, it protected shall see, its outcome will determine what the future of published books, maps, and charts written by living U.S. digital culture looks like. authors as well as unpublished manuscripts by them.5 The act gave the author the exclusive right to “print, reprint, publish, or vend” these works. Now, copyright protects a ฀ Stronger copyright: wide range of published and unpublished “original works 1790 versus 2006 of authorship” that are “fixed in a tangible medium of expression” without regard for “the nationality or domi- Copyright law is a complex topic. It is not my intention cile of the author,” including “1. literary works; 2. musical to provide a full copyright primer here. (Indeed, I will works, including any accompanying words; 3. dramatic assume that the reader understands some copyright works, including any accompanying music; 4. pantomimes basics, such as the notion that facts and ideas are not cov- and choreographic works; 5. pictorial, graphic, and sculp- ered by copyright.) Rather, my aim is to highlight some tural works; 6. motion pictures and other audiovisual key factors about how and why United States copyright works; 7. sound recordings; 8. architectural works.”6 law has evolved and how it relates to the digital problem at hand. Rights Three authors (Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law at the Stanford Law School; Jessica Litman, Professor of In contrast to the limited print publishing rights inherent Law at the Wayne State University Law School; and Siva in the Copyright Act of 1790, current law grants copyright Vaidhyanathan, Assistant Professor in the Department owners the following rights (especially notable is the addi- of Culture and Communication at New York University) tion of control over derivative works, such as a play based have done brilliant and extensive work in this area, and on a novel or a translation): the following synopsis is primarily based on their con- tributions. I heartily recommend that you read the cited ฀ to reproduce the work in copies or phonograph works in full. records; ฀ to prepare derivative works based upon the work; The purpose of copyright ฀ to distribute copies or phonograph records of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or Let us start with the basis of U.S. copyright law, the by rental, lease, or lending; Constitution’s “Progress Clause”: “Congress has the ฀ to perform the work publicly, in the case of literary, musi- power to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, cal, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors and motion pictures and other audiovisual works; the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and ฀ to display the copyrighted work publicly, in the case of Discoveries.”2 Copyright was a bargain: society would literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, grant creators a time-limited ability to control and profit pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural from their works before they fell into the public domain works, including the individual images of a motion (where works are unprotected) because doing so resulted picture or other audiovisual work; and in “Progress of Science and useful Arts” (a social good). ฀ in the case of sound recordings, to perform the work pub- Regarding the Progress Clause, Lessig notes: licly by means of a digital audio transmission.7 It does not say Congress has the power to grant “creative property rights.” It says that Congress has the power to Duration promote progress. The grant of power is its purpose, and its purpose is a public one, not the purpose of enriching The Copyright Act of 1790 granted authors a term of four- publishers, nor even primarily the purpose of reward- teen years, with one renewal if the author was still living ing authors.3 (twenty-eight years total).8 Now the situation is much more However, entertainment and information companies complex, and, rather than trying to review the details, I’ll can have a far different view, as illustrated by this quote provide the following example.