NATIONAL HUMANITIES ALLIANCE

BASIC PRINCIPLES FOR MANAGING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN THE DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT

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PRINCIPLE 2

2. Copyright law should foster the maintenance of a viable economic framework of relations between owners and users of copyrighted works.

The rich and timely circulation of information--regardless of whether it is contained in physical or electronic media--underlies the educational mission. It depends upon a viable publishing industry to promote communication across institutional and disciplinary boundaries and upon a sustainable library system to store, preserve, organize, and provide access to information. Other institutions, such as museums and historical societies, depend on a reliable source of revenue from their copyrighted collections to support their equally important stewardship responsibilities.

• To this end, the educational community supports the use of copyright ownership to enable publishers, creators, and owners to secure reasonable returns on investments in intellectual products and sustain their enterprise.
• Management of rights should encourage a reasonable balance between the cost of permission seeking and the use for which permission is sought.
• The educational community opposes extensions of copyright protection that would suppress fair competition or allow monopolies to prevent users from accessing and using information in an economical and convenient form. (For example, the proposed Sui Generis Database Protection Act, with its perpetually renewing rights, could suppress fair competition. In addition, excessive extension of copyright term could have the same effect.)
• Debate over whether and how the first sale doctrine should be applied to digital works is ongoing. Its resolution is likely to involve a complex combination of technical, legal, and business measures. Under existing law, the doctrine of first sale permits the legal purchaser of a copy of a work to dispose of it in any way the purchaser wishes, including reselling, lending, or giving it to others. The ability of libraries to lend is based on this doctrine. Because digital works can be instantly reproduced and transmitted--e.g., by posting on a Web site for browsing--while an "original copy" is retained, many copyright owners fear that extension of first sale rights into the digital environment will destroy their markets. Some have sought to protect their products by asserting that they are licensed rather than sold and that these works can be used only as the license prescribes. Concerned that license restrictions will prohibit the digital equivalent of examining the contents of or borrowing a book or journal without purchase, some libraries argue that a digital first sale equivalent is essential to the teaching and research enterprise. Emerging technologies not yet in the commercial marketplace may provide a means of simulating first sale conditions with "envelope" or "lockbox" software, but it is not yet possible to predict whether they can be applied in desirable ways that are acceptable to consumers.