Copyright Office Says DMCA Is OK,
with Clarifications
The Library of Congress’s U.S. Copyright Office has determined that there is “no convincing evidence of present-day problems” with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. In a congressionally mandated, 166-page report on the effects of the act released August 29, government copyright attorneys did conclude, however, that the law needed amendments to allow users to make temporary backup copies of software and to allow file archiving.
The report examined in depth the implications in the digital world of the traditional “first-sale doctrine” that allows purchasers of a book to resell it or give it away without the publisher’s permission. It concluded that making a copy of a digital file and passing it on to someone else constitutes illegal reproduction, not redistribution, and that arguments claiming an analogy with printed works are “flawed and unconvincing.”
Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters admitted in the August 30 Washington Post that “reaching sound conclusions and particularly formulating recommendations proved, frankly, to be more difficult and time-consuming than anticipated.”
ALA Office for Information Technology Director Policy Rick Weingarten said he was disappointed by the report. “In our view, [the Copyright Office] still doesn’t grasp what technology is doing to the issue of user rights,” he said.
Others were more outspoken. Columbia University Law Professor Eben Moglen said in an August 31 Salon online forum, “This report now positions the ‘Library of Congress’ not as a library like other libraries, but as a shill for the ‘campaign contributors’ whose bribery of legislators brought about the disgraceful statute with which this ‘Library,’ alone among libraries, cannot find anything wrong.”
Posted September 3, 2001.
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