Libraries Represented at Final Hearing
on the Digital Copyright Act
James G. Neal, director of libraries at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, testified November 29 on behalf of the American library community at the U. S. Copyright Office’s final hearing on the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Speaking of the act’s effect on the first-sale doctrine, which limits the copyright owner’s rights after the first copy of a work is sold, he said the law “may prevent the application of the first-sale doctrine to digital works” and that fair use is “being undermined by contract and restrictive licensing.”
Neal recommended that Congress modify the law when it reconvenes, paying particular attention to provisions that would clearly allow interlibrary lending, classroom use, archiving, fair use, and donations to libraries.
Other groups that expressed a different viewpoint were also represented at the hearing, among them publishers, movie studios, and software makers. “The DMCA has had no negative effect on the ‘first sale’ doctrine, the emergence of new technologies, nor the relationship between products and commerce,” said Fritz Attaway, senior vice president of government relations for the Motion Picture Association of America.
The DMCA requires the Registrar of Copyrights to submit a report on the law’s impact to Congress by the end of February 2001.
Posted December 4, 2000.
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