Congressional chairman: Enforce existing copyright law
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WASHINGTON - The chairman of a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee focused on the Internet and intellectual property said he is reluctant to create new laws protecting copyrights online.
But Representative Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, also criticized Internet users who swap music files online and university officials who have been slow, he said, to punish students who download music from file-sharing services. He suggested music downloaders should be subject to existing laws, instead of Congress creating new ones.
"I believe existing copyright law is adequate," Smith said. "It simply needs to be enforced."
Smith spoke Tuesday at a day-long conference, "Promoting Markets in Creativity: Copyright in the Internet Age," sponsored by conservative think tank The Progress and Freedom Foundation. He advocated music downloaders be punished for their actions, but said he was skeptical of the effect of more laws on curbing file sharing.
"This process begins with education and ends with disciplinary action," said Smith, a Texas Republican. "(New laws) are hard to write, easy to ignore, and hard to repeal if unintended consequences harm the marketplace."
As recently as late 2002, Congress was considering a bill that would allow groups like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to disable PCs used for unauthorized file trading. The RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America applauded the bill as one way for them to fight unauthorized file trading. That bill stalled in the House, and Smith didn't mention any legislation by name in his Tuesday speech.
Earlier in the conference, a panel of lawyers and economists debated whether lawmakers should carve out a special place in copyright law for the Internet. Edmund Kitch, a law professor at the University of Virginia, argued that copyrighted works should have the same protections on the Internet as they have elsewhere, despite arguments from some Internet users and academics that copyright shouldn't apply online.
Kitch noted that the 1976 Copyright Act anticipated future technologies that could distribute copyrighted materials and built-in copyright protections under any new technologies. He argued against file traders and others who would argue that works released on the Internet are in the public domain.
"Works on the Internet are subject to copyright," Kitch said. "This means that today in America that those who advocate an absence of copyright ... are the ones who must go to Congress and get a revision of the statute. It's the infringers who need to get out (of the current copyright law), not the copyright owners who need to get the technology in."
Kitch said current copyright law has problems with being enforced, but he predicted copyright holders would find a way to control the Internet.
"The idea, articulated in various ways is ... the Internet is this wild zone of freedom and autonomy where anarchy reigns," he said. "I have what is perhaps a minority view. The Internet, it seems to me, is one of the most natural environments for enforcement of law that ever existed. It's a centralized electronic system which has its own systems of keeping a historic record."
