The Future of Copyright

At the 12th annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy meeting I was on a panel debating the future of intellectual property, in particular the issue of how copyright law is constraining technology. Other panelists included John Perry Barlow, Steve Metalitz of the IIPA, and fellow named Wrenn from Yahoo. As is so often the case, I was the only woman on the panel, and the only librarian. Oh, and I had five minutes to make my case. What you can't see here is that at the point when I said 'I am of course talking about librarians' the audience burst into applause. If you, reader, are a librarian, then that applause was for you. I wish you could have heard it!

Coyle, Karen. Karen Coyle (2002). Articles>Intellectual Property>Copyright

Internet Library

There's a lot of bragging on the Internet about how big it is, how much information the Web has to offer. I ran across a discussion group posting a while back where the moderator announced that one of the search engines had indexed 9 billion words. I went to the University of California online catalog and did a quick calculation: 9 million titles x 300 pages x 500 words.

Coyle, Karen. Karen Coyle (1997). Presentations>Information Design>Accessibility

Privacy

Privacy is especially difficult to define because it means different things to different people. Each of us has our own privacy needs. Women often have different privacy concerns than men; asking a 9-year-old child his age over the Net has different privacy implications from asking the same question of a middle-aged adult. A question that may not be seen as violating our privacy in one situation could have that appearance in another.

Coyle, Karen. Karen Coyle (1999). Presentations>Information Design>Privacy

The Technology of Rights: Digital Rights Management

Very briefly, thin copyright usually refers to a minimalist approach to copyright, giving works only as much protection as is needed to encourage creativity but with a goal of making works readily available to the public. Thick copyright is a more maximalist approach, and crudely put the goal of thick copyright is generally to maximize profits. We appear to be moving toward thick copyright, not only in this county but around the world in general. This movement is being spearheaded, as you might expect, by companies whose main product is in the form of intellectual property, such as books, movies and music. But there is yet another trend relating to the protection of intellectual property and that is the creation of technological controls to protect digital works. This is referred to as Digital Rights Management, or DRM. DRM is not a single technology and it is not even a single philosophy. It refers to a broad range of technologies and standards, many of which are still in the planning and development stage. DRM is not thin copyright, and it isn't even thick copyright; DRM is potentially a nearly absolute protection of works.

Coyle, Karen. Karen Coyle (2003). Articles>Intellectual Property>Copyright