Heather Green, Commentary: Are The Copyright Wars Chilling Innovation?Business Week, October 11, 2004. Excerpt: "Scientists like to probe the unknown and pioneer useful technologies. But in the spring of 2001, Edward W. Felten discovered that such efforts aren't always welcome. A computer scientist at Princeton University, Felten took part in a contest sponsored by the Recording Industry Association of America to test technology for guarding music against piracy. He and his students quickly found flaws in the new antipiracy software and prepared to publish their results. But when the RIAA learned of the plan, it threatened to sue under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)....The lesson many scientists drew was that copyright protection takes priority over research. 'The legal tools that are being used to rein in bad behavior are so blunt that they block a lot of perfectly benign behavior,' Felten says. 'That worries me.' It's a concern that reverberates broadly in tech circles at a time when Congress is considering tough new antipiracy legislation....Intimidation isn't hard to spot in academia. Aviel Rubin, a Johns Hopkins University professor who last year uncovered flaws in electronic-voting software developed by Diebold Inc., says he spends precious time plotting legal strategies before publishing research connected in any way to copyrights. Matthew Blaze, a computer scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, avoids certain types of computer security-related research because the techniques are also used in copy protection....Nobody disputes that digital technology has created unforeseen dilemmas for copyright protection. But changing the laws to target versatile technology and scientific investigation rather than bad behavior is asking society to pay too high a price."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/08/2004 02:12:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
