The amount and quality of source material on the Internet - digital documents, recordings, films, paintings or other media - will suffer until ways of protecting electronic copyrights can be developed, according to a Columbia University computer scientist.
Publishers are reluctant to distribute their products electronically, even though the technological means of doing so (inexpensive, accurate color printers; recordable CD-ROMs; set-top boxes) are at hand. That's because there is so far no way to collect copyright fees when users download the material, says Judith Klavans, director of Columbia's Center for Research in Information Access.
Now, much of what is on the Internet is available for any kind of use, at no cost to the user. As a result, universities, libraries and other institutions have been stymied in attempts to develop digital libraries, since publishers won't allow an institution to buy one copy of a book and make it available electronically.
Further development of the Internet depends on finding ways to allow copyright holders and other businesses to seek authorized payment for use of their work, Dr. Klavans said. "Commerce on the Internet will not be possible until the technology to guarantee payment, authentication and security is developed and implemented at the international level," Dr. Klavans said. "Without timely advances, the Internet may well become a repository for advertising and junk mail, rather than a source of valuable information."
Dr. Klavans, who is also deputy vice president for information services at Columbia, with James R. Davis, research scientist at Xerox Corp.'s Palo Alto Research Center, recently organized a workshop that took the first steps toward resolving the thorny problem of how to place copyrighted material on the Internet. Held at Columbia's Arden Homestead conference center in late September, the workshop, "Towards a Formalism for Terms and Conditions," brought together publishers, lawyers, technology experts, librarians and government officials.
The workshop, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, was devoted not to hardware issues, but to how copyright holders can define the conditions under which the work they own may be copied, and how libraries can use technology to assure authorized access.
With the appropriate technology, proposed conditions of use on a copyright-friendly Internet could be expressed in a search ("Find all movies under $5 starring Sylvester Stallone" or "Find sports magazines that allow republication" or "Find pre-copyright jazz CD's for under $2") or could even be negotiated by e-mail. In the absence of such a system, some creators are relying on homegrown schemes to seek payment, such as asking Internet users to mail a check before making available a hard copy of a document.
The next step is to develop software that allows authors and publishers to set not only the price for use of an electronic item, but also means and location of use, expiration of the restrictions and any detail that copyright agreements now cover under U.S. law, Dr. Klavans said. Such software would also perform copyright-indexed searches and send bills to users.
Dr. Klavans founded the Center for Research on Information Access in January 1995 to initiate and coordinate digital library projects both within the Columbia community and with other institutions. The center, housed in Columbia's Butler Library, relies on the School of Engineering and Applied Science for technical advice and support. More information on the center can be found at: http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~klavans/cria.html.
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