Intellectual property and the National Information Infrastructure : the report of the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights / Bruce A. Lehman, chair.

  • United States. Information Infrastructure Task Force. Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights.
Date:
[1995]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Intellectual property and the National Information Infrastructure : the report of the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights / Bruce A. Lehman, chair. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    mord jobs for Americans. It-can-spur’ economic-growth.__ More than half of the U.S. work force is in information- based jobs, and the telecommunications and information sector 1s growing faster than any other sector of the U.S. economy. New job-opportunities-can-be created in the processing, organizing, packaging and dissemination of the information and entertainment products flowing through Se I) é The NII can provide benefits to authors and /consumers by reducing the time between creation and //dissemination. It will open additional markets for authors. ’ If authors choose to enter those new markets, it will provide a wider variety and greater number of choices for consumers, which should increase competition and reduce prices. The availability of these benefits is by no means assured, however. Authors are wary of entering this market because doing so exposes their works to a higher risk of piracy and other unauthorized uses than any of the traditional, current modes of dissemination. Therefore, authors may withhold their works from this environment. Further, even if authors choose not to expose their works to this more risky environment, the risk is not eliminated. Just one unauthorized uploading of a work onto a bulletin board, for instance -- unlike, perhaps, most single reproductions and distributions in the analog or print environment -- could have devastating effects on the market for the work. Thus, the full potential of the NII will not be realized ‘af the education, information and entertainment products protected by intellectual property laws are not protected effectively when disseminated via the NII. Creators and other owners of intellectual property rights will not be willing to put their interests at risk if appropriate systems -- both in the U.S. and internationally --_are not in place. to- permit them to set and enforce the terms and conditions under which their works are made available in the NII environment. Likewise, the public will not use the services available on the NII and generate the market necessary for