The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which publishes 30 per cent of all computer science journals worldwide, is to stop requiring authors to comply with a controversial US digital copyright law.
The IEEE produced a new set of conditions for publication at the beginning of 2002. These required that authors鈥� work must not contravene the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Many academics believe the DMCA discourages scientists from publishing valuable research through fear of legal action. The DMCA prohibits 鈥渁ny technology, product, service, device, component or part鈥� that circumvents digital copy protection systems. This includes the software encryption designed to stop people making copies of music or video files, for example. 快猫短视频s say the Act means that just producing research on a copy protection system could land them in legal trouble.
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A similar piece of European legislation called the European Union Copyright Directive is being prepared.
But following many complaints, the IEEE has now decided to change the document. 鈥淭he plan is to remove the reference to the DCMA,鈥� says Bill Hagen, intellectual property rights manager for the IEEE. 鈥淚t鈥檚 controversial to say the least. We鈥檝e been getting a lot of correspondence, comment and opinion and have been forced to reconsider it.鈥�
Digital rights
Ian Brown, a computer science researcher at University College London, welcomes the IEEE鈥檚 decision. 鈥淚t鈥檚 great news,鈥� he says 鈥淚鈥檓 sure that in future other organisations will be far less ready to impose such restrictions.鈥�
Richard Clayton, a computer scientist at Cambridge University, says: 鈥淚 think we鈥檙e all coming to see that it鈥檚 a nonsense for the law to attempt to suppress pure research. Incidents like this raise awareness, and make people look hard at the laws in their own jurisdiction.鈥�
In April 2001, a group of US academics say they were threatened with fines or jail under the DMCA for planning to show weaknesses in a music industry copy-protection system at a US conference.
In another high profile case in July 2001, Russian software programmer Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested on charges of violating the Act. His arrest came shortly after he presented research on an electronic book copy protection system at a conference in the US.
Hagen says that a new version of the document authors must sign will be worked out and should be ready by the end of summer 2002.