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FSEC approves digital copyright resolution
By DONNA LONGENECKER
Reporter Assistant Editor
An Orwellian society, in which access and distribution of information is tightly controlled, is at the scholar's doorstep, according to John Ringland, associate professor of mathematics.
At yesterday's meeting of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, Ringland, chair of the senate's Computer Services Committee (CSC), further clarified the details of a proposed resolution that calls for university support of efforts to amend the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and a companion piece of proposed legislation, the Consumer Broadband and Digital Protection Act (CBTPA). Both of these prevent the "direct, unmediated, unfettered access to information required for scholarshop" by making it criminal and/or impossible to access information in any way other than what a content provider, such as a publisher, authorizes.
The FSEC yesterday approved the committee's resolution, which now will go before the full Faculty Senate for consideration at its Feb. 4 meeting. To read the full text of the resolution and Ringland's presentations on this issue, go to http://orange.math.buffalo.edu/csc/.
"A content provider need only encrypt content, even in a trivial way, in order to render criminal the means to exercise fair use of the content, and thus to control the modes and occasions of access to the content," he said.
A recently introduced bill, the Digital Media's Consumers' Rights Act (DMCRA), would amend the DMCA by specifying that it "would not be a violation to manufacture, distribute or make non-infringing use of a hardware or software product capable of enabling significant non-infringing use of a copyrighted work." Ringland said he hopes the university will actively support this amendment and lobby for at the national level.
A primary goal of the DMCA, he explained, is to create a pay-per-use society in which the function of a library is very much the same as a bookstore—a place in which the only way to get information is to pay for it.
"Pay-per-use for academics is really bad—a price the general public might acquiesce to could easily put us heavy users out of business," he said.
Former Congresswoman Pat Schroeder, now president and chief executive officer of the Association of American Book Publishers (AAP), a national trade organization of the U.S. book publishing industry, has publicly declared AAP's vision of pay-per-use for digital books, Ringland said.
"Their visions of the future of the library and the future of the bookstore are essentially the same. The DMCA provides the means for them to implement this vision," he added.
Ringland cited Moore's Law—that information-processing power is increasing exponentially—and notes that in a DMCA-enforced, pay-per-use society the expense of doing what is technically feasible also will increase exponentially.
Ringland listed concerns about certain kinds of file-security software offered by a number of companies that enable a user to send out "secure" email or documents and then delete them from the recipients' computer after a specified amount of time.
"When I read "1984" a long time ago, one of the things that seemed implausible was the ability of the government to actually recall newspapers and modify the past—but here it is, here is that technology. That's why I think this resolution is so important," he stressed.
This technology already is impacting the campus, according to Judith Adams-Volpe, director of university and external relations for the Arts and Sciences Libraries. She told senators that a large technology research publisher, Elsevier, is deleting journal articles from electronic sources already purchased and owned by the university.
"The time will come very soon when those deleted articles may never be seen again," said Adams-Volpe.
She noted that the publisher has given "very specific" reasons for its actions, ranging from the claim that deleted articles were plagiarized to the insistence that particular articles were not, in fact, research articles. She cited as an example Elsevier's removal of an article about Palestinians and their ethnic heritage from other Middle Eastern groups.
"Elsevier is saying that it's a political and social science article and not a research article," said Adams-Volpe. Even more troubling, she pointed out, is the fact that these journal articles are not archived by the company and while print copies may exist, the university doesn't have copies of them on campus.
Technologies like this, noted Ringland, prevent the archiving of material, and even if a scholar wants to take a screen shot of a document, hardware may be designed not to allow it if the CDBTPA becomes law.
Samuel Schack, professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics, said it's irrelevant whether or not the journals articles currently are available in print—it's the modification or removal of electronic journal articles, for reasons which the university would never support, that is setting a bad precedence. "It's a very, very bad trend and they have us over a barrel," he said.
"It would make it possible to eliminate any attempt by scholars to keep an accurate academic record."
In response to questions from FSEC members about why this problem hasn't provoked a national outcry, Schack said the issue flew under the academic radar for awhile. "A national outcry has to start somewhere—hopefully, this will generate a certain amount of press and sympathy, and encourage other universities to take a strong stand as well."
"None of what I'm proposing," added Ringland, "overturns or infringes on copyright law."
In other business, senators heard a presentation by Dan Ryan, director of Career Services, who detailed efforts over the past several years to raise the quality of services provided to students and employers. He said the goal of the office is to connect students with the best possible job opportunities and re-establish a strong relationship with employer communities as a means of making that happen.
Ryan said the university now has relationships with about 2,034 companies "that span the globe," but that most were located within Western New York.
Part of the turnaround in services was initiated by gathering data from student surveys that, over time, have shown improvements in the way students view Career Services. Launching an on-campus job program and stepping up marketing of services to students are just a couple of the ways the office has improved its image, he said. About 1,000 students are employed through the on-campus job program-a payroll of about $5 million, he added.