[WEB4LIB] RE: Gray Hats Re: Re: Jack Valenti: Copyright and

[Lloyd Davidson]

Napster and other P2P systems that flagrantly break copyright bear much of 
the responsibility for the sudden heightened interest by publishers of all 
media in highly secure digital rights management (DRM) systems, such as are 
being developed by InterTrust and a variety of other companies.  The advent 
of such technology, which encapsulates digital objects in secure digital 
containers, secured at either the hardware or software level, or both, will 
soon make copyright and fair use obsolete concepts.  Not only will most 
legal restrictions on this material depend primarily on contract law and 
the DMCA (and possibly UCITA and ultimately copyright law), but it will be 
physically impossible to access, copy, print or propagate the contents of 
these secured containers without the specific consent of the immediate 
controller of the material, whether copyright owner or simply distributor. 
Often, consent will only be given in exchange for some sort of payment, 
monetary or otherwise.  In addition, much public domain material of any 
consequence, including government information, could be, for all practical 
purposes, removed from free and open access by such devices.  The effect of 
these restrictive systems on scholarly communication is potentially 
devastating, yet libraries will have little say as to their implementation 
and general application to traditional library materials.  In my opinion, 
this is one of the more fearsome and now inevitable outcomes of Napster's 
abuses. To be sure, Napster is not entirely to blame for this, and such 
secure, access-controlled DRM systems probably would have soon become 
popular anyway, simply because the economics of profitable commercial 
online media distribution seems to strongly favor their deployment in our 
current cultural and ethical environment.  Nevertheless, Napster and the 
P2P movement in general are responsible for the rapidity of their 
development and ever widening commercial acceptance.

Lloyd