"Copy Protection" - Copyright It
Thursday, November 22, 2007SUSIE GHARIB, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT ANCHOR: Good evening everyone. The U.S. financial markets were closed for the Thanksgiving holiday. So, tonight, in this program, we'll look at a legal matter with high stakes for business -- the current system of protecting intellectual property. That's the term for information, artistic works, or inventions that result from ideas or creative activity. And, even though intellectual property is literally the figment of someone's imagination, American law treats it as a real item that authors or inventors can control in varying degrees.
PAUL KANGAS, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT ANCHOR: Intellectual property that is in a tangible form is protected against unauthorized copying through copyright law. But, there are questions as to whether the copyright system is still workable, or whether a new model is needed. Correspondent Erika Miller reports.
ERIKA MILLER, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Radiohead is a popular British rock group, but it's not just its music that's attracting attention. Radiohead is selling its latest album online directly to fans, for whatever they wish to pay -- even nothing, if they choose. That's a major shift from the traditional ways of distributing copyrighted material and it reflects doubts as to whether the copyright system can still function in the digital age. Following up on a provision in the U.S. Constitution, the first U.S. copyright law was passed in 1790 and signed by George Washington. Its intent?
JEFF KLEIN, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ATTORNEY, GOODWIN PROCTER: Essentially promoting the investment, the time and the expense of those authors to actually take that investment and create something that is, for lack of a better word, creative and that people will enjoy.
MILLER: It did that by giving them the exclusive right to authorize copies. In the case of books, writers could give those rights to publishers in exchange for royalty payments. Copyright protection now extends for the life of the artist, plus 70 years. It goes into effect automatically when a work is released, even when an e-mail is sent. But to back up their authorship claims, many choose to register their works with the copyright office at the Library of Congress. There are certain exceptions to copyright protection under the law's fair use provision. This allows limited use of copyrighted material for criticism, commentary, news reporting, education and research.
And in 1984, the Supreme Court extended that loophole to cover electronic recordings made for personal use on video recorders. However, the arrival of digital technology and the Internet in the 1990s made it easier than ever for unauthorized copies of copyrighted material to be distributed. Congress responded in 1998 by passing the digital millennium copyright act. It is intended to deter the use of technology to get around copyright protections. But it's had only limited success in stopping the sharing of copyrighted material online. Today, illegal downloading and copying is rampant, costing U.S. industry a reported $60 billion a year. For that reason, many top executives of content companies favor strengthening copyright protections. NBC's Jeff Zucker says it's the only way that expanding the company's digital content offerings makes financial sense.
JEFF ZUCKER, PRESIDENT & CEO, NBC UNIVERSAL: Their future will depend critically on our ability as the copyright holder to protect this content from being stolen and to prevent our new distribution models from being compromised at birth by pirates and counterfeiters.
MILLER: Others, like Sumner Redstone of Viacom say copyright is needed to keep the American economy competitive.
SUMNER REDSTONE, CHAIRMAN & CEO, VIACOM: Copyright compels creativity. It furnishes the incentive to innovate. If you limit the protection of copyrights, you will stifle the expression of new ideas.
MILLER: But consumer advocates take a different view. Many, like Gary Shapiro of the Digital Freedom Campaign, favor expanding consumer rights to allow the free exchange of copyrighted material.
GARY SHAPIRO, PRESIDENT, CONSUMER ELECTRONICS ASSOCIATION: It's something that is very important that consumers understand as we shift into this digital age, that they have a right to use their lawfully acquired content in their home and in their car -- to manipulate it, to create their own, to video their kids, to put things up on youtube. And they have these rights. And what we're concerned about, we're trying to change, is that the copyright laws have gotten way too strict.
MILLER: However, record companies have declared war on alleged copyright violators by filing over 26,000 lawsuits against individuals. In the first verdict in those cases, a Federal jury recently found a Minnesota woman liable for $222,000 in damages for sharing music online and sums like that are sure to further heat up the debate over copyright protection. Erika Miller, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, New York.
