Copyright law's delicate balance of rights between authors and readers could be mooted as content authors and distributors latch onto ways to protect their work technologically. Engineers are creating VCRs that play a rental tape only once, computers that report their owners to the authorities or cease to function if they have been tampered with, and software that records—and charges for—usage of a document down to the word. At the same time, legislation has been introduced to criminalize those who crack copyright management schemes or who write software that could be used to do so. As code displaces law, and law is modified to reinforce the new code, the traditional entitlements of users (for example, the right within limits to make "fair use" of documents one possesses) are threatened in practice even as they survive on paper. Should we strive to preserve those entitlements? What are the consequences of a world in which technology owes allegiance to someone other than the person who owns it?
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Students Debate the Role of the Internet in the Arts World
Moderator: Jonathan L. Zittrain, Executive Director, Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School; Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School
Panelists: Pamela Samuelson, Co-Director of Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, University of California at Berkeley; John Gilmore, Electronic Frontier Foundation; James Schindler, Information Security Program Manager, Hewlett-Packard Corporation
Web content creators are testing the legal and technical limits of how much they can control or charge for derivative uses of their sites. For example, should a commercial site expect to remit a finder's fee to a site that links to it because the site sends along business, or instead demand payment for having improved the linking site by featuring its products or ideas? Common law judges have recently been asked to decide who is misappropriating from whom when one site links to or frames another. The attorneys pressing these cases, the sites stuck in the middle, and other stakeholders convene in this session to discuss the issues.
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Framing, Linking and Packaging: Who Deserves What?
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Hearing on On-Line Copyright Liability Limitation Act HR 2180 Before the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property: Statement On Behalf of the Graphic Artists Guild
Moderator: William W. Fisher III, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Panelists: Daniel Abraham, Illustrator and past Vice President for Public Affairs, Graphic Artists Guild; Thomas R. Bruce, Co-Director, Cornell Legal Information Institute, Research Associate in Legal Informatics, Cornell Law School; Bruce P. Keller, Partner, Debevoise and Plimpton, New York; Peter Harter, Global Public Policy Counsel, Netscape Communications Corporation; Mark Lemley, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Texas School of Law
Criminal laws drafted in the traditional style of rule and sanction, designed to restrict dissemination of objectionable material, have been derided by cyberlibertarians as misguided and, in any case, hopelessly ineffective. Private ratings systems have been touted as alternatives to satisfy a desire for content filtration, particularly by parents concerned about their children's netsurfing. These so-called less-restrictive and less-intrusive options may, however, present new difficulties: some critics point out that systems designed to restrict children's exposure to offensive material could be subverted by governments or Internet access providers to apply to anyone. Others worry that easy filtration could replace the meaningful (if contentious) social dialogue of the commons with autonomous, homogeneous communities, each automatically avoiding confrontation with challenging or uncomfortable ideas. Can a desire to allow free speech and a desire to curtail unwanted materials—as judged by a government or by a reader—be reconciled?
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U.S. Law on Filtering and Blocking on the Internet
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Internet Filtration
Moderator: Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Panelists: Jerry Berman, Executive Director, Center for Democracy and Technology; Ann Beeson, National Staff Attorney, American Civil Liberties Union; Andrew L. Shapiro, Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School; Peter Yip, Co-Founder and Executive Vice Chairman, China Internet Corporation; Christopher Wolf, Partner, Proskauer Rose LLP
The initial success of entrepreneurial Internet businesses brings them up against the power of the companies and countries whose businesses they are displacing. These threatened interests often react by using their entrenched power in legislatures, regulatory agencies and executive offices to stifle the budding Internet enterprise in legal and regulatory snares. The result is inefficient constraint of market and cultural development, and prolongation of obsolescent technologies. What can be done about this? What is the power of the Net? Suggestions for others entertained.
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Moderator: Charles R. Nesson, Director, Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, William F. Weld Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Panelists: Peter Granoff, Wine Expert and Co-Founder, Virtual Vineyards; Finn M. W. Caspersen, Chairman and CEO, Beneficial Corporation; Doug Metz, Managing Director, Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America; Robert A. F. Reisner, Vice President, Strategic Planning, United States Postal Service; Bill Myers, Chief Executive Officer of the United States Internet Council
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