You have been very, very helpful. I apologize to you that my colleagues are not able to be here. We will attempt to insure that your statement is read by them and will come to their attention. Certainly, they would feel as indebted to you as I for your testimony today. Thank you. Mr. LANGE. Thank you. Mr. KASTENMEIER. That concludes today's hearing. We will convene tomorrow for further hearings on copyright and technological change at 10 o'clock in the same room. There will be two witnesses tomorrow and until that time the committee stands adjourned. [Whereupon, at 1:25 p.m., the subcommittee was recessed, to reconvene at 10 a.m., Thursday, July 21, 1983.] COPYRIGHT AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE THURSDAY, JULY 21, 1983 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON COURTS, CIVIL LIBERTIES, AND CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS Washington, DC. The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10 a.m., in room 2226, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Robert W. Kastenmeier (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Representatives Kastenmeier, Mazzoli, Glickman, Moorhead, and DeWine. Staff present: Michael J. Remington, chief counsel; Deborah Leavy, assistant counsel; Thomas E. Mooney, associate counsel; and Audrey K. Marcus, clerk. Mr. KASTENMEIER. The subcommittee will come to order. This morning the subcommittee is continuing its hearings on copyright and technological change. Our first witness will be Dr. Fred Weingarten, who is program manager of the communication and information technologies program at the Office of Technology Assessment [OTA]. OTA is an agency of the Congress responsible for performing long-term analysis of technological trends and their impact on public policy. Dr. Weingarten, who has an undergraduate degree in engineering and a doctorate in mathematics, has gained a reputation as an expert in information policy. We are very pleased to greet you, Dr. Weingarten. You may proceed as you wish. TESTIMONY OF FREDERICK WEINGARTEN, PROGRAM MANAGER, COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES PROGRAM, OFFICE OF TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Mr. WEINGARTEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to submit my written testimony for the record, and then comment on it and discuss it more informally. Mr. KASTENMEIER. Without objection, your 16-page statement will be received and made a part of the record. You may proceed. Mr. WEINGARTEN. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I am the program manager for communication and information technologies at the Office of Technology Assessment. The Office of Technology Assessment, of course, is an analytical arm of the Congress. We are administered by a Technology Assessment Board that is chaired at this time by Congressman Üdall, and has five other distinguished Members of the House of Repre sentatives on the Board, and six Senators. Our Vice Chairman is Senator Stevens. There are nine programs of the Office, of which my program is concerned with all telecommunications and information policy issues. We have done a number of studies during the last 2 or 3 years that have addressed various aspects of public policy and computer technology. Mr. KASTENMEIER. If I may interrupt, we have a very significant document here, dated November 1982, and entitled "Informational Technology and Its Impact on American Education." Mr. WEINGARTEN. Yes, sir. In fact, I brought that along myself. Thank you very much. I am particularly proud of that study because I was the project director for that study. Mr. KASTENMEIER. I am pointing this out not for your benefit, but for the record and for the audience. Actually, I guess our question is informational technology and its interface with American copyright law and proprietary issues. Mr. WEINGARTEN. In fact, those issues tend to arise in a number of studies we do. In fact, in that study we address very briefly certain questions of intellectual property protection-don't come to a lot of conclusions, but raise the questions of whether those problems with those laws, in fact, affect in that case the production of educational software and educational materials. Several of our advisory panel members, advisers from industry, in fact pointed to some problems in that area. I will refer to them and, in fact, come back to them a little later. We also published somewhat earlier than that, in October, a report, "Computer-Based National Information Systems," which was the initial report from the CIT program. In that report, we did an extensive survey of the trends on technology and the development of the industry, and tried to track out for the Congress a number of issues in a broad sense that we though the next decade would confront the Congress with, and intellectual property, once again, was designated as one of those issues. I would like to structure my testimony in two pieces: One, talk about some trends, not just in the technology, but in the industry that stands in back of that technology-and second, raise some questions for which I don't really have any ready answers at this time. I would like to point out for the record that OTA has not done a study in the copyright area or in intellectual property. Therefore, what I have to say does not constitute findings or opinions of our Board or of OTA. But I am appearing here mainly to describe the state of technology and to raise some questions that might be significant. Mr. KASTENMEIER. You have, I think, done some studies on patents in the pharmaceutical industry's- Mr. WEINGARTEN. Yes, sir. We have published a technical memorandum on the patent term extension. Mr. KASTENMEIER. Yes. Mr. WEINGARTEN. That particularly focused on the drug industry. We also have in press a larger study of patents and new technology. In both cases, those did not really address information technology issues per se. Mr. KASTENMEIER. I can see that. But it is in that large intellectual property area. You have done some things relating to patents which have been useful to this subcommittee. Mr. WEINGARTEN. Yes, sir, that is correct. A patent study is in press now and should be out shortly. When attempting to paint a picture of what is happening technologically, we are right in the middle of an extremely complex time, rapid innovation, rapid introduction of new products, changes, new inventions coming on the market every month, and it is very hard to pull out of all of these strands of activity certain key patterns that are taking place. A recitation of all of the technologies coming on the market really isn't, in my opinion, useful for policy analysis. So what I have tried to do here is to identify what I consider to be five very significant trends within the area of information and telecommunications, and then tie those to the questions that this committee has before it. The first principal trend or characteristic of the technology that I described is what I call the variety of choice. In the past, the business person, the homeowner, had a number of technologies that perhaps you could count on one hand-a television set, a telephone and, in business, large main-frame computers, and so on. What we have happening now is an incredible proliferation of technologies in all these areas to provide new kinds of services and to do old kinds of jobs in a different way. For instance, in communications, plain old telephone servicewhat they used to call POTS-is being replaced by a variety of specialized information communication services at the local levels, technologies for tying together word processors, personal computers, and business computers within a building, new technologies for communicating within a region, in a city, or cable television or broadcast technologies, and long distance, even worldwide communications systems, designed to facilitate video conferencing, audio conferencing, computer data transmission. An incredible variety of alternatives are now facing the communicator. In a similar way the computer market is diverging. We are all aware, of course, of the recent developments in personal computers, desk-top computers. OTA itself is currently going through a significant change in that area as we move toward using personal computers for our analyses. In the area of television or video services, the standard network broadcasting services are being supplemented by cable. In the near future, low-power broadcasting, direct-broadcast satellites, and other forms of technologies are going to bring a much wider variety of programing and entertainment services to the home. There are also new technologies that I think may be particularly important for the copyright area, new technologies for creating programing. I refer to computer graphics and other types of computer-generated information systems. Finally, there are new types of information services that are currently at the level of experimentation in the United States-Teletext, Videotext-that in some European countries are further along in implementation, but that promise to bring new types of information products and services directly into the home. |