The language of the statute is certainly broad enough to include computers and other kinds of communication devices that are yet to be created. Perhaps more troublesome for remote access is the question of whether the transmission itself, rather than the reception of it, is exempt from liability for infringement under Section 110 or as a fair use. Providing remote access requires that at some point, the work be transmitted from the host computer or server to the user's computer. That could be virtually all mulitmedia works. That would make fair use the only possibility for excusing transmission of a multimedia work.
Multimedia works and fair use.
The legal issues involved in making multimedia works available electronically will become increasingly important to libraries because it is not clear at all whether libraries can provide access to such works without permission from the copyright owner. The Distance Learning Guidelines permit the transmission of a multimedia work only once without permission. The Multimedia Guidelines only permit transmission of faculty-created multimedia works for remote instruction over secure and password protected networks for fifteen days if the receiver can copy the work. As you will see, it requires a very creative fair use argument resting on a number of tenuous assumptions to provide continuous reserve access without permission. But, this is just the kind of unsettling circumstance that should signal the need to negotiate sufficient access to meet users' legitimate needs upfront, when such works are originally acquired.