Word: copyrighted
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...favorite poem you'd like to share with friends online? Beware: you could get your service provider busted. A draft version of proposed legislation makes bulletin boards responsible for copyright infringements on their piece of the Net. Needless to say, companies like American Online and CompuServe aren't exactly pleased with the idea. It's like making "the highway responsible for the reckless drivers that use it," protests Kent Stuckey, general counsel of CompuServe. On the other side: copyright holders like music publishers and publications. Bulletin boards "are profiting" from the work of artists, says Susan Mann, attorney...
...movie seasons. This novel marketing strategy is intended to coincide with school vacations, revitalizing the movie's audience appeal and chances for Academy Award nominations, which occur in the winter. Though the movie has been the source of some controversy over political incorrectness and threats of a lawsuit over copyright violations by a Japanese firm, no changes to the film's content are planned. Total take so far: $233 million...
...more gently paced Roman Catholic Church bureaucracy. When CRNET, a Virginia-based Catholic dial-up network, put the new Catholic catechism online this month, fearful editors had to yank it after a few hours. The reason: the U.S. Catholic Conference declared that the Vatican -- which, after all, holds the copyright on the catechism -- has to decide just when its texts should be electronically distributed. The issue will have to be deliberated by numerous committees and ultimately signed off on by the Vatican. "I don't think just anybody can put the catechism online," says the USCC's Father John Pollard...
Trying to stamp out piracy under the current copyright system may ultimately prove futile. "The drafters of copyright never anticipated a day when everyone could infringe," says Michael Godwin, staff counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Godwin thinks society may be entering a postcopyright era, in which the creators of intellectual property have to find new ways to be compensated for their work. In the future, the real value of a piece of software may not be in the program itself but in the ancillary services that come with it: printed manuals, frequent upgrades and a live person...
...speech on a troublesome new medium. In the U.S. a widely publicized federal case against a college student accused of operating a pirate bulletin board may backfire if, as expected, a judge rules that the charges filed against the student do not fit the crime. The underlying difficulty, say copyright experts, comes from trying to guard intangible electronic "property" using laws that were crafted with printing- press technology in mind...