By Bill Steele
United States copyright law hasn't changed, even though advances in technology have made it much easier to violate.
That was the message a group of campus editors heard last week.
"Copyright infringement is widespread on the Internet," university counsel Pat McClary told the monthly meeting of the editors' group, an informal organization of staff members who produce publications for their departments. McClary and Margie Hodges, policy adviser to Cornell Information Technologies, spoke on the application of copyright law to new electronic media like the World Wide Web.
The first fundamental, McClary said, is that there are no new, special rules for the new media. "The same rules that apply in the print world are applicable to computer media," she said, admitting that interpretation of the law is still sometimes confused. "The courts are still trying to grapple with applying the law to the new situation."
She quickly reviewed the basics of the copyright law of the United States. The law literally refers to the "right to copy," and reserves to the copyright owner the right to make copies, distribute and display copies and make "derivative works" that would include, for example, a web page containing all or part of a work or a multimedia product using a copyrighted image.
One exception, she pointed out, is the doctrine of "fair use," which allows brief quotations or references to a work. Unfortunately, she said, "The statute doesn't do a good job of defining what fair use is."
The courts have so far generated confusing answers on fair use, she noted. In one case, the Texaco Corp. was found guilty of copyright infringement for copying technical journal articles and distributing them to its employees. In another, a Michigan copy service was found to be exercising fair use when it copied chapters from a book in preparing student course packs.
"The Texaco decision was in a federal court in New York," McClary pointed out, "so that's the one that probably applies to us."
An important change was made in the law in 1989, she noted: a copyright notice is no longer required to obtain copyright protection. Before that change, you might assume that a work was in public domain if no notice appeared on it; now you should assume that the work is protected even if no notice appears.
Cornell copyright policies
Cornell wants to ensure that students, faculty and staff members don't violate copyright law, Hodges told the group.
The university has a specific policy on copyright, she said, but this deals mainly with the ownership of works produced at the university. Copyright problems in cyberspace come under the Policy on Responsible Use of Electronic Communications, which says that all existing laws and university policies apply in computer communications just as they do anywhere else, she said.
That policy was drafted by a work group created in 1991 by Stuart Lynn, then vice-president for information technologies. Hodges, then the university's judicial administrator, was a member of the group.
"We sat for a year debating the issues," she recalled, "and finally came down to doing what is best for the institution." That meant, she said, discouraging any action that would make individuals or the university liable or damage the university's public image.
The policy specifically mentions copyright issues, she said, and includes a table of actions to be taken in the event of specific violations of other laws or policies. One of these refers to "electronically distributing or posting copyrighted material in violation of license." Complaints about this violation, the policy says, are to be reported to Cornell Information Technologies. If the behavior violates either the Campus Code of Conduct or the Code of Academic Integrity, CIT will refer the complaint to the appropriate office.
No monitoring
Despite all this, Hodges said, the university is not going to monitor private e-mail, Usenet postings or any other electronic communication. "We're not going around trying to find problems," she said. "But we will respond to a complaint about copyright violation, just like any other complaint."
Both speakers agreed that many questions are still up in the air when it comes to applying copyright law to electronic communications. Is it all right to copy an article from The New York Times web page and send it to a friend? Distribute it in your office? Post it on your own web page? "There are no clear answers now," McClary said. "You have to look at all the factors -- what type of work it is, how much of it is being copied, how widely is it going to be dissseminated, how many copies are being distributed, is it for an educational purpose -- and come to the best conclusion you can. Perhaps the most important question is whether or not you are damaging the copyright owner in some way."
Hodges concluded by asking the group to "think about the copyright law, even when working on the Internet, and consider carefully what you're doing."
The university's Policy on Responsible Use of Electronic Communications can be found at http://www.univco.cornell.edu/ru.html on the Web. The copyright policy is not yet available on the web, but a copy may be obtained from the University Counsel.