News
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045173 |
| Published date | 01 April 1992 |
| Date | 01 April 1992 |
| Pages | 243-252 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
News
General news
Copyright or wrong
The appointment of a man with a legal
rather than a scientific background as
the new Director of Chemical Abstracts
Service (see Robert J. Massie in the
'People' section below) seems appro-
priate at a time when copyright issues
are becoming increasingly central
to
the
business of information.
This notion was underlined by the
EIIA when it recently appointed its first
legal counsel, Julian Dickens, a special-
ist in information and multimedia law.
Says Chairman Marino Saksida:
'With directives from the European
Commission in progress on Data Pro-
tection and the Legal Protection of
Databases, important GATT trade-re-
lated intellectual property issues still
in front of us and the prospect that the
Berne Convention and copyright laws
of
all
jurisdictions will begin to recog-
nise the real electronic information
copyright issues increasingly in the
coming years, our members will now
know that the legal issues are assum-
ing paramount importance. We in-
creasingly need first-rate advice from
a well qualified expert.'
In the US, where going to court is a
national obsession, Accolade Inc. hired
11
copyright law professors to testify to
the US Federal Appeals Court that a
lower court injunction banning Acco-
lade from developing and selling soft-
ware for the Sega Genesis game ma-
chine violated existing copyright laws.
To cut a long story short, Sega sued
Accolade for illegally copying its soft-
ware while reverse engineering to study
how the product operates. According to
Computergram (18 June), the 'law pro-
fessors concluded that disassembly of
game programs for the sole purpose of
studying their functionality and deter-
mining the specific information they
contain that enables them to operate on
a particular computer should
be
deemed
a fair use and not an infringement under
the Copyright Act, and that it is not in-
fringement to use such interface infor-
mation in creating new and non-infring-
ing games to operate on the same
computer.' Got that?
The point is, the law professors
examining this issue preside at the most
prestigious law schools in America.
What chance is there for firms without
access to the top legal minds?
Fortunately, associations such as the
EIIA in Europe and the
IIA
in the
US
are
ready and able to help their members
cope with copyright conundrums. In
fact, the
IIA
frequently puts a word in at
the highest level — to the legislative
bodies that pass the laws in the first
place.
One of the Association's latest battles
is against a bill introduced in the House
of Representatives (H.R. 191) that
would make it legal for the government
to claim copyright in works created by
its employees. The proposal concerns
computer software developed by labora-
tories in cooperation with non-federal
parties and the IIA argues that
its
passage
would undermine 'critical information
policies'.
Unimpeded access to government
information and strong intellectual
property protection for private sector
information products and services
underpin the strength of the US infor-
mation industry, the IIA testified, stat-
ing that the 'detrimental impact on the
public's right
to
know' if the bill became
law would far outweigh any possible
benefits. To the argument that federal
copyright is necessary in order to com-
mercialise software, IIA contends that
there have been numerous successful
commercial software products based
upon public domain software (dBase,
for example) that were copyrighted as
derivative works.
The IIA also testified against a bill
that would affect the copyright status of
legal compilations. H.R. 4426 would
place publisher-assigned section num-
bers and other citation information in
the public domain and acknowledge the
power of states to charge 'reasonable
fees'
for public domain legal materials.
The IIA argued that the bill would
weaken two key factors that encourage
broad public access to the law. 'First,
statutes, regulations and court decisions
are clearly in the public domain. Sec-
ond, strong copyright protection for
original compilations of these materials
gives the private sector strong incen-
tives for the investment of time, re-
sources and skill required to bring the
information to the public on a timely
basis,
with maximum accuracy and in
the media and formats that meet a
diverse range of consumer needs.'
The issue is complicated by the EC's
recent proposal on legal protection of
databases, which challenges the US to
change its law or lose full protection for
databases in
Europe.
The
IIA warns
that
H.R. 4426 would exacerbate the prob-
lem and 'dampen investment' in compi-
lations of
all
kinds.
For copies of the testimony on both
bills,
contact the IIA.
Women still underpaid
Women information professionals still
earn less than men according to the la-
test survey of salaries and benefits paid
to members of the Institute of Informa-
tion Scientists. The results show that not
only do women info pros earn less than
men, but that the gap has widened since
1986.
In that year, the median total pay for
women members of the IIS was
£11 550, 82.5% of the male median pay
of £14 000. By 1992, these figures had
increased to £18 500 for women and
£23 100 for men, women now earning
only 80.1% of the equivalent male
wage.
The survey looks at the impact of
other variables on the total pay of infor-
mation workers, such as age. It found
sharp differences between age groups
The Electronic Library, Vol. 10, No. 4, August 1992 243
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