BEEF MAGAZINE, BOVINE MANAGEMENT, KANSAS FARMER, FARM CHEMICALS HANDBOOK, PEANUT GROWER, MICHIGAN FARMER, MINNESOTA FARMER, MISSOURI FARMER, NEBRASKA FARMER, OHIO FARMER-STOCKMAN, NEW ENGLAND FARMER, FLORIDA GROWER & RANCHER, PENNSYLVANIA FARMER, ALABAMA FARMER, CAROLINA FARMER, FLORIDA FARMER, AG CONSULTANT, VEGETABLE INSECT MANAGEMENT, GEORGIA FARMER, KENTUCKY FARMER, FARM CHEMICALS INTERNATIONAL, PRODUCTORES DE HORTALEZ, TENNESSEE FARMER, ARKANSAS FARMER, THE GROWER, PLANT HEALTH GUIDE, LOUISIANA FARMER, MISSISSIPPI FARMER, ORNAMENTAL OUTLOOK, AMERICAN VEGETABLE GROWER, OKLAHOMA FARMER, NEW MEXICO FARMER, TEXAS FARMER, COLORADO RANCHER AND FARMER, PEANUT FARMER, COTTON INTERNATIONAL, LA NUEVA ERA, IDAHO FARMER, NEVADA FARMER, OREGON FARMER, WESTERN VEGETABLE GROWER, FARM CHEMICAI 3, UTAH FARMER, WASHINGTON FARMER, GREENHOUSE GROWER, WYOMING FARMER, ARIZONA FARMER, CALIFORNIA FARMER, FARM PROGRESS, SUCCESSFUL FARMING MAGAZINE, PORK '98, SOYBEAN GROWER, SOUTHWEST FARM PRESS, WHO'S WHO IN EGG AND POULTRY, BROILER INDUSTRY, TURKEY WORLD, POULTRY INTERNATIONAL, SUCCESSFUL FARMING, FLUE CURED TOBACCO FARMER, COTTON FARMING, BOVINE VETERIN, BURLEY FARMER. AGRICULTURE NEEDS DATABASE PROTECTION August 8, 1998. Hon. THAD COCHRAN, The United States Senate, Agricultural Rural Development Subcommittee, Senate Appropriations Committee, Washington, DC. DEAR SENATOR COCHRAN: We are writing to urge you to support legislation to protect database against piracy soon to be the subject of the House-Senate Conference Committee and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (S. 2037). Though this legislation is in the House version (Title V) of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, it is our understanding that Senator Hatch has drafted a Senate response as a result of negotiations with all parties. We expect that this too will be acceptable as is similar legislation S. 2291 introduced by Senators Gramms, Helms, Cochran, and Faircloth and about which we wrote you on July 23, 1998. What would not be acceptable would be failure to act on this legislation this year. We must provide protections immediately for the time, money, and energy companies expend creating databases to assure that the databases vital to agriculture will continue to be timely and accu rate. Nowhere is the continued access to timely, accurate, and comprehensive databases more important than in the agricultural sector. Databases contain information that is essential to farmers in making the best possible choices. From initial production decisions regarding soil conditions and crop yields to the final determination of prices according to the latest market conditions, farmers rely on current and thorough information. With the vast advances in technology, farmers are increasingly dependent on the databases which have played an integral role in the industries growth for decades. A prime example is precision farming, in which a computer relies on databases to determine the necessary inputs in order to achieve the optimum crop yield. By combining information in various databases, such as soil moisture patterns and county soil type data, agricultural software packages offer growers field mapping, precision soil sampling and testing, and variable rate and blend applications, that will result in increased productivity. Equally crucial are those databases that provide wholesale prices, consumer prices, market demand, and consumption. Information is also crucial for risk management. As U.S. farm policy shifts toward freer market principles, futures markets offer farmers a risk management tool that is likely to assume greater importance. These markets are based primarily on information, regarding supply and demand, prices, margins, etc. The more accurate information available to market participants, the more efficient the system, and less losses suffered by buyers and sellers. The technology that has become so important to agriculture now threatens the viability of the information which so much of agriculture depends. A number of our databases have already been threatened. We urge you to act in our best interests and to support all efforts to ensure that the Digital Millenium Copyright Act is enacted with provisions protecting database against piracy. Sincerely, Mr. COBLE. Thanks to you all for complying with the 5 minute rule and for the members of the subcommittee for having equally complied. We're in pretty good shape timewise. Mr. COBLE. I have confirmed with Mr. Berman, the gentleman from California, we have concluded that we probably will do a second round of questions because of that. So let's move along here and we'll shoot for a second round of questioning as well. Thank you. If you will, folks, keep your questions as brief as possible because of the time limit. Ms. Winokur, do you use personal and/or private medical information in developing your collection of information without authorization of the patient? MS. WINOKUR. No. We actually use no patient information at all in our databases. Mr. COBLE. There are, in fact, legal obstacles to such activity anyway, are there not? MS. WINOKUR. Yes. Mr. COBLE. How would this legislation affect the use of disseminating private medical information? MS. WINOKUR. I don't think it has any impact on it but I'm not an attorney so I can't really address that. Mr. COBLE. That's my conclusion, that it doesn't. Mr. Neal, you indicated that the current intellectual property framework protects only expression and not investment. Now, is the protection of trademarks not an intellectual property operation, number one? And, number two, how do you respond when I say that in America we have a long history of rewarding investment lest you have nothing to share with your patrons. How do you square that question with your comment that it only protects expression? Mr. NEAL. I think our concern in the library and education community is the protection of appropriate use. We currently invest in excess of $2 billion a year on materials for our users. We do not seek information for free. We understand that unauthorized copying can lead to piracy. We believe legislation which prevents piracy is appropriate. We feel that people have made investments in database creation and distribution and need that protection but we also have to have that downstream ability to use that information for purposes of using new expressions of research results and new contributions to the work of the education and research communities. Mr. COBLE. Mr. Neal, all of the library associations you represent today are not non-profit, is that correct? They are not all non-profit? Mr. NEAL. There are libraries represented in those associations that do serve for profit organizations. That would be primarily, but not exclusively in the Special Libraries Association. Mr. COBLE. Thank you, Mr. Neal. Professor Lederberg, you indicated that technological protections are available to protect databases. I'm inserting words in your mouth on that. Well, let me do that. [Laughter.] You can remove those words. Do you believe that encouraging holding up data through that means rather than or in lieu of providing legal protection is the best course? Mr. LEDERBERG. I think it's very important that there be legal as well as technological protection on databases. The issue is how all encompassing they should be. I think none of the Academies or the AAAS has anything but sympathy for prevention against wholesale piracy. I think we are concerned that in our zeal to remedy those egregious crimes that we also carve out new rights in tiny portions of the database in small collections of facts, which is the grist of what scientific activity is all about. I just want to make that distinction. Mr. COBLE. Let me work in one more question before the red light. Mr. Kirk, if you will, speak to in your opinion what might occur or what might result to American owned collections of information overseas if the Congress does not adopt this legislation, A. And, B, do you think that we will jeopardize any reciprocal protection offered by members of the European Union by not adopting this legislation. Mr. KIRK. Mr. Chairman, I think that we put at risk American databases, perhaps not the large companies that can have a European presence but all the many small database creators in this country that can not afford to have a European presence if we do not adopt a protection for databases that's considered comparable to what the EU has. I would say that having dealt with those lovely people from the European Commission for a longer part of my life than I would have liked I will tell you that they will stop at nothing to spread the particular type of approach that they have on a reciprocal basis. I think, going to a question that Mr. Pease asked earlier, in WIPO nothing is likely to happen in WIPO but that does not mean that nothing is likely to happen period. We are making a choice by doing nothing if that is the choice we follow. We're making a choice to allow the rest of the world to adopt the European model and I'm not sure that that is the direction that we would wish to go in. Mr. COBLE. Thank you, Mr. Kirk. Mr. McDermott, your testimony indicates that realtors have won their legal cases against pirates due to copyright law. Devil's advocate question: why then would you be interested in protections offered by this legislation? Mr. MCDERMOTT. Mr. Chairman, although the courts have helped the Realtors in past cases they were lengthy and expensive and they have done so where the whole of the listing is pirated rather than where specific sections such as addresses or owner's names were involved. They held that the database was protected by current law only because of the market information and the abbreviations used that are unique to realtors were contained. We think that's a rather thin protection in terms of the database as a whole. In future court cases that would, in fact, look at it more specifically, could endanger the entire MLS system as it is. We think that seeking protection in this legislation gives us much more ability to accomplish our major goal. And our major goal is not to make this data more complex and harder to get to. It is to make it an orderly market system that allows the consumer to participate in the real estate market at a greater level of intelligence than they've had before. Mr. COBLE. Thank you, sir. I have a couple more questions but I'll reserve those for my second round. The gentleman from California. Mr. BERMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to sort of just do some public musings about some of the issues that have been raised and get your reactions and ask some more specific kinds of questions in the final round of questions. But let me just say additionally that your testimony has been really interesting. There does seem to be a little schism here that has not been breached. Although I would disagree with Mr. Duncan regarding the administration. I did not view the administration as fundamentally assaulting the principles of this bill. Now, Dean Neal, he says 'We on behalf of the libraries agree with many of the administration's criticisms' but the solution that you propose, this proposal that's out there somewhere-I guess this is what Senator Hatch might have been giving as one of the options-seems to me so far beyond what the administration is saying that at some point, not right this second, but I'd be interesting in hearing from Neal, Lederberg, Phelps deal with the notion of what's wrong. Why is Mr. Duncan inaccurate? You're saying 'Oh, there well could be a problem here and we should come right out and legislate that an exact replica duplication of a compiled database is a horrible act and nothing else is.' because, I mean, I don't know whether it's protected by copyright or not. But it's not much of a deterrent to the underlying rationale for the bill. So I don't view that proposal, if that's what is meant by that proposal, as a serious alternative proposition that will accomplish making the universities and the libraries comfortable. which I care about very much. I don't think that bridges the gap at all. On the other hand, for the proponents of the bill the argument about what the Europeans are doing-as a general proposition if this is a bad idea the fact that we need to do it because otherwise the Europeans won't give protection to something that we don't think is worth giving the kind of protection to that you want is a bit of a bootstrap argument. So I think the threshold question is do the benefits of establishing this appropriation outweigh some of the costs. I just want to ask that. And then let me ask one specific question. Ms. Winokur, the Physician's Desk Reference, we all remember that. That's where we found out-that's where we all ran to find out what certain things that people were lying to us about were really about. [Laughter.] Mr. DELAHUNT. Would you expand on that, Mr. Berman? [Laughter.] Mr. BERMAN. It's been around a long time. I'm curious, is there a competitor to that that exists now or is there such an advantage in the original compilation of data that if we apply something like this bill you almost become a monopolist? You can jack up the prices, you can do anything you want because somebody else going through all that is like being the second person to lay the cable wire, it ain't going to ever happen. We're not going get a second cable system in the area because nobody can go through that expense, everybody's hooked on the first one. |