Those who have a stake in the outcome must find common ground and must slow Congress and the Administration in the rush to engrave change into domestic legislation and international treaty. If the digital millennium is to last a thousand years, there is nothing lost by taking another year to do it right. Higher education, publishers, and creators share a mutual interest in ensuring expanding markets for intellectual property and in stimulating creative activities. We depend on each other, and must respect our different, but overlapping, interests. Our universities and colleges are substantial consumers of published works, but they are also incubators and producers of intellectual properties.
Many publishers depend on the creations of our faculty and students.
We must ensure that unintended consequences of law and technology do not sideline fair use copying. There must be protections for those who make copies for legitimate fair use, preservation, or other legal purposes, or who innocently stumble on an unauthorized copy of an intellectual work on the Web. Digital technologies and electronic publication herald great promise for the advancement of scholarship and learning, and for fostering new avenues for creative endeavor. Electronic publishing has already crossed the threshold from promise to reality. Our collective responsibility is to shape the right policy, legislative, and technological frameworks to ensure that all parties will benefit from the bright and digital future that lies ahead.