ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, December 21, 1996 TAG: 9612230071
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: GENEVA
SOURCE: Associated Press
Negotiators agreed to major copyright accords on Friday that bolster protection against software piracy worldwide and lay the groundwork for increased commerce over the Internet.
Libraries, Net ``surfers'' and groups providing Internet access won a big victory in the final treaties: Temporary copies of copyright materials that computers automatically make when a user is browsing the World Wide Web will not be considered violations of copyrights.
If that provision had not been deleted, any time anyone looked at copyright material on a computer - including schoolchildren at their local library - it could have constituted a violation of international copyright law, opponents said. That might well have killed the Internet.
``Say I look at The New York Times on my computer screen. I'm not making a hard copy and I'm not saving it in my long-term memory, but nonetheless there is a copy in my computer,'' Barbara Simons, chairwoman of the U.S. Public Policy Committee of the Association for Computing, a professional organization, said in San Francisco.
``That could be a copyright violation. But it's also an intrinsic part of how the technology works. It would probably also result in massive civil disobedience.''
Adam Eisgrau of the American Library Association said the main achievement of the negotiations was an even-handed balance between copyright protection and the needs of consumers.
The treaties protect copyright owners to ``create wonderful works that enrich all of society, but tempered with that protection a balance affording access to information,'' Eisgrau said.
Another major issue still has not been resolved: whether databases can be copyrighted just like creative materials. Extending copyright protection to facts would give professional sports leagues and stock exchanges exclusive rights to their statistics, opponents say. But proponents argue they have a right to recoup the investments they've made to compile the facts.
That discussion was shunted aside after many countries said they weren't ready to address it.
The 160-nation, three-week negotiating session, under the auspices of the United Nations' World Intellectual Property Organization, aimed to protect the multibillion-dollar stakes of writers, artists, musicians and other creators of copyright material wafting through cyberspace.
The first treaty is an update of the Bern Convention, which went into force in 1889 to provide international protection for literary and artistic works and has been revised about every 20 years since.
The second treaty, which mirrors the first, is the first global accord to protect the rights of recording artists and producers, in an age when digital copies of music can be made almost instantaneously anywhere by computer.
LENGTH: Medium: 58 linesby CNB