The paper s extreme imbalance of rights made Congress agree with Samuelson. Imposing strict laws on digital media now will only serve to dampen its unborn potential in the future. That s what these treaties do. The biggest disagreements at the conference, however, were over fair use provisions on the Internet, temporary copying, and property rights for databases. Article 12 of the draft WIPO treaty wanted to restrain fair use rights, a copyright provision that we usually take for granted.
Fair use allows the duplication of copyrighted materials for private or educational use.
Making a photocopy or printout of a newspaper article for a research paper is considered fair use. Fair use provisions also cover backup copies of computer programs. Lehman, however, feels these concerns are overblown. We have always had a right of reproduction. In addition to the national delegates at the conference in Geneva, a lobbying group called the Ad Hoc Copyright Coalition attended.