The membership of the ACM includes more than 85,000 information and computing professionals worldwide, including almost 70,000 persons who reside in the United States. As an organization, we are very pleased with your interest in promoting the benefits of information technology. We welcome this opportunity to provide for you and the Members of the Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property our perspective on the issue of copyright protection for electronic information. From our perspective the current language of this bill fails to recognize the legitimate needs and interests of academic, professional, scientific, and ordinary users of telecommunications technology, and innovators who will create new kinds of intellectual property. Under the present Copyright Act, there is no liability for merely viewing a copyrighted document.
Liability results only when one makes an unauthorized copy of a document.
The effect of the new definition would be that transmitting a digital copy of a document will expose a person conducting academic or scientific research on the Internet to liability. The revised Act will also give broad discretion to copyright owners to bring lawsuits against many users of the Internet. The threat of legal action could greatly decrease the legitimate research and study now widely done on the Internet across our country. The Congress should not inhibit the kind of information diffusion that the NII makes possible. As a society of academic and scientific professionals, the ACM has a particular interest in the development of a copyright policy that serves a broad mission.