ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Monday, December 2, 1996               TAG: 9612020132
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL   PAGE: A-5  EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times

BILLIONS ARE AT STAKE AT COPYRIGHT SUMMIT

HOW TO UPDATE current international laws to accommodate the digital age is harder than it first sounds.

Billions of dollars and the commercial future of the Internet are on the line as Clinton administration officials, media and technology executives and consumer advocates meet in Geneva today to discuss a stack of highly controversial proposals for overhauling copyright law.

In the first government-level meeting in decades of the World Intellectual Property Organization, participants hope to update international law for the digital age - a mission that nations large and small and a wide cross-section of industries agree is a worthy endeavor. Cyberspace is widely seen as the future distribution medium for books, movies, music and software, and effective copyright protection is essential to its development.

But that's where the consensus ends. The U.N. body's proposals, contained in three draft treaties and strongly supported by the Clinton administration, have already produced a rancorous debate in the United States, the world's biggest exporter of intellectual property.

Supporters of the treaties say they are merely a common-sense extension of existing property rights, but opponents characterize them as a sweeping power grab by big media conglomerates.

Entertainment and publishing companies backing the new measures want to extend copyright protection to new kinds of intellectual property and strengthen protections against piracy, which digital technology makes easier than ever.

But public advocates and some communications and computer companies say the draft treaty tramples the rights of information consumers. Giving copyright owners too much power, they argue, will impose unacceptable policing requirements on Internet service providers and stifle the growth of the Internet as a democratic communications medium.

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