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                                                   ISSN 1069-7799
                             ALAWON
                 ALA Washington Office Newsline
               An electronic publication of the 
         American Library Association Washington Office
                                
                      Volume 4, Number 87
                        October 16, 1995
                                
In this issue: (117 lines)
     INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE TASK           FORCE'S LEGISLATIVE RECOMMENDATIONS INTRODUCED IN
          HOUSE AND SENATE

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                     INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY:
INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE TASK FORCE'S LEGISLATIVE         RECOMMENDATIONS INTRODUCED IN HOUSE AND SENATE

Legislation has been introduced in both Houses of Congress to
implement the allegedly narrow recommendations on intellectual
property in the "White Paper". Taken virtually verbatim from the
White Paper, these House and Senate bills, H.R. 2441 and S. 1284,
respectively, are a "mixed bag" for libraries.  These bills are
likely to be subject of hearings, perhaps as early as this
November.  

BACKGROUND:  As previously reported in ALAWON, Vol. 4, No. 80
(September 8, 1995), Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and
Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks Bruce Lehman unveiled the
long-awaited White Paper by the Working Group on Intellectual
Property of the Administration's Information Infrastructure Task
Force on September 5.  Approximately two years in the making, the
White Paper (officially called "Intellectual Property and the
National Information Infrastructure") broadly discusses the
protection of intellectual property in a digital age, but
recommended to Congress what its authors characterize as merely
"narrow" changes in the Copyright Act.

It remains to be seen whether the current 104th Congress will
have the time or inclination in a Presidential election cycle to
tackle the comprehensive Copyright Act reform needed to implement
all of the changes discussed in the analytical sections of the
White Paper.   On the clearly positive side of the ledger, both
bills clarify that libraries may use digital techniques to
preserve works and increase the number of permissible
preservation copies that may be made from one to three.  In
contrast, other proposals are sufficiently broad and vaguely
worded to create troubling uncertainty for libraries.  These
include:

 -- defining "distribution by transmission" as publication under
the Copyright Act;

 -- recognizing the temporary "reproduction" of a document in
computer memory as a possible infringement;

 -- prohibiting the circumvention of information security systems
and the importation or manufacture of devices which serve that
purpose;

 -- barring the removal or alteration of copyright management
information without the copyright owner's authority regardless of
the remover's intent; and

 -- criminalizing prohibited importation, decryption and
management information offenses.

Finally, both pending bills also propose permitting the nonprofit
reproduction of large format material for the visually impaired. 
The copyright owner is granted a full year, however, in which to
decide to market such material before such nonprofit activities
are allowed.

It remains too early to tell whether these bills will actually be
acted upon by the relevant House and Senate Committees and, if
so, whether their scope will be expanded to incorporate some of
the White Paper's more troubling conclusions -- both express and
implied.  Murkier still is whether Senate Majority Leader Robert
Dole and House Speaker Newt Gingrich will take increasingly
scarce floor time to consider their respective Judiciary
Committees' work even if S. 1284 and H.R. 2441 are reported out
of Committee.

The ALA Washington Office will be following this issue closely
and report further as debate proceeds in Congress and elsewhere.

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