The turbulence about these questions is nicely brought out in the dispute about such things as the rights to reproduce video and the rights to reproduce print. I think the industry is taking a grubby, traditional short-term economic selfinterest position-take the money today and forget about the future.

If one has a view that says American society is increasingly going to be permeated by this new information technology, if one recognizes that technology is central to the economy and intrinsically democratizing in its political implications, one should frame legislation which promotes the freest and most open exchange of information and let the short-term issues be treated as short-term transition questions.

This notion of taxing the tape or taxing the machine is just the most narrow kind of short-term self-interest inhibiting the greater public good.

You have the same thing in the scientific community in which the scientific publishers have already proliferated an absolutely asinine system of rights and access and payback. To the best of my knowledge it has not constrained anybody from reproducing an article and probably has a general effect of degrading respect for the law.

Technology is also affecting language. Hardware, software, micro, modem, bytes, bits, mouse, light pen-these and other terms are coming into the language at a great rate. But more important than vocabulary, the structure of the language, the grammar, is changing. Such things as graphics are creating new modes of knowledge, new ways of looking at things. It is rather clear that this new technology will shape the very way we think. We must be sure that in protecting interests that we stimulate new thinking, not thwart it.

Science is creating interesting new basic questions of legal categorization. The fundamental principle of genetic science, molecular biology, is that the genes which code the structure of every living organism are an information code. If you are concerned with information, the interesting question of the following sort comes up: Let's say we create in the laboratory a new organism that has commercially desirable characteristics.

One way to look at it is that the organism is merely a specific embodiment of a code in the same way that a published book is a specific embodiment of an author's manuscript. Maybe it should be protected under something like copyright. On the other hand, the way the law is now going it is embodied as a composition of matter and protected under patents.

To try to force that discussion in either of those categories is not productive. What one has to do is have an image of the future of society and frame the legislation to optimize on what we want the future to be like.

One of the implications of this point is that legislation which has an old law and a new law element to it might be very important in the future. Certain things could be protected by the past law and new developments protected under new legislation.

Technologically, there are interesting things coming along that may modify some of our preconceptions rather sharply. Encryption technology, for example, the ability to encode very complex materi

al at relatively low cost, and provide keys to vast numbers of users may in fact modify the sense of privacy, security, economic, and commercial access to much that is now available by telecommunications and computers. But that is such a new opportunity that its implications for your deliberations are wide open and vague.

Let me mention as one last area of trends, the integration of the global economy. Right now airplanes fly daily out of New York carrying office work, white collar work to the island of Jamaica, where you can hire a secretary fully literate in English and fully competent in office work for $3.50 an hour, compared to $6.50 in New York.

The export of information work by airplane is only a faint image of what will happen when we are exporting and importing it wholesale by telecommunications, satellite, and computers.

So the universe of discussion has broadened to the globe, not merely to the United States, and not merely to a particular industry.

The famous Chinese copies in Hong Kong are no longer limited to printed material. They are duplicating in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and a dozen other places the physical technologies of this new era of information. Integrating that trend into our thinking is important for the future.

Finally, let me suggest that the integration of the global economy suggests that it is not unreasonable to conclude that by the turn of the century, the software capital of the world may very well be India, with its vast stock of underutilized doctoral level scientists and engineers. Integration of the global economy, it seems to me, should be important to the future.

Let me end by suggesting a single, somewhat pallid image of the future which, if developed further, might be useful in your deliberations.

As I see it, by the turn of the century the average American household will have as large an investment in computers, telecommunications, and related matters as it now has in the automobile.

The best estimates today are that investment runs $1,500. We are talking about it running up to about the area of $5,000, $6,000, $7,000, or $10,000. That is a fundamental, technical, economic, social democratic transformation. It is that image which should inform your deliberations.

Thank you very much for this opportunity to talk with you. [The statement of Mr. Coates follows:]

It is an honor to have the opportunity to speak to you about major changes in technology and in American society apropos of the exercise of your oversight function on copyright. I am a futurist, that is, one who earns his living in the systematic study for public and private clients, of long-range trends in American and the global society and their implications for present day decisions. I believe that I can be most useful to the Committee in tracing out some of the major changes that should form a context for radically reconstructed legislation with regard to ownership and access to information, knowledge, and other intellectual property.

Before turning to the trends which are shaping the future, let me suggest several conclusions with regard to legislative needs. That should make clearer what the evidence I present is leading to.

First, it would be a serious mistake to improve the present
body of copyright law incrementally. To force the future
into a mold of the past and the present would do a dis-
service to the nation.

Second, actions should occur with some dispatch to stem
the flow of court decisions which must force the future
into historical arguments, categories, and decisions which
are obsolete. The courts have the potential for crippling
the future. They are increasingly exercising that

potential.

Third, we must anticipate and develop images of the
future which focus from the point of view of this com-
mittee's deliberation on the role of knowledge and infor-
mation in shaping society. In that way, new legislation
can create a future which will permit the flourishing of
information as a commodity and management instrument in

Let me just cite two intellectual inventions.

One was pay

as-you-go income tax, invented by Beardsley Ruml in World War II. Obviously, that is a major social invention having a profound value for society in terms of controlling inflation and being able to finance government expenditures. Ruml in no way benefitted from

that, other than in satisfaction and prestige.

An interesting mixed case of an intellectual invention with a physical aspect is the highway cloverleaf. The cloverleaf is a major element in modern highway construction throughout the world, and yet to the best of my knowledge, the inventor of the cloverleaf never received any compensation and had no rights to that concept. It would seem perfectly reasonable that every cloverleaf built in the world as a device to speed transportation and save lives merits him a reward especially since we routinely reward people who invent such trivial or merely convenient things as styrofoam coffee cups and hula hoops. A major new need of the future will be to expand, elaborate, and perfect the concept of intellectual property and widen the variety of mechanisms for providing rewards.

Another derivitive consequence of the rapid pace of change in the information society is illustrated by the current concern over the illegal reproduction of video tapes and movies. Many things in our society, particularly but not exclusively in the area of entertainment and business (tip sheets and newsletters), have very high short-term economic value which rapidly decays. We may, therefore, need mechanisms which provide strong protection and severe sanctions for illegal use in the short run but become more relaxed and even are eliminated in the slightly longer run. Protecting information ephemera will be a growing problem.

Technology is also making possible infinite variations in written, printed, and graphic materials. In the same way that you on Capitol Hill can take a dictated letter and personalize it for every constituent, similar things can be done with books, voice and video tapes, graphics, maps, and so on. This creates problems and opportunities for protection.

An illustration of the problem of the new information society is the status of software. Traditionally, software was considered incidental to the development of hardware. As the price of hardware has fallen, and as the use of computers, both mainframe and micro permeates society, it is clear that the life-blood of that system is software, that is, programming. And there is no doubt in my mind that ownership rights should be attached to software, which incidentally is the basis for tax and revenue. But the role of software in various systems differs, and what the rules for protection should be is quite blurred. The need to clarify those points is enormous. The possibilities of minor variations on copyrighted software type are great. One must look out for the potential predatory practices in which minor variations effectively neutralize or infringe the rights of the developer.

Many of these questions would be best solved by mechanisms that take them out of the formalized court procedures and encourage other kinds of mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration. But again those laws should have built-in safeguards against proceduralization, which is increasingly the bane of our world. So long as the vast legions of lawyers have a stake in complexity, they will work diligently to complexify these matters to feather their own nest, while the longer term interests of society and individuals are thwarted. Forcing the new information technology into old copyright is a bonanza for lawyers and a blow to progress. Trends in technology are creating new kinds of information and new kinds of potential copyright, ownership, and access issues. Take, for example, the case of space flights which remotely collect geographic information. These overflights now raise the issues as to who should have the right to deal with that information. It is truly a new perspective on the world; whether any precedent fits is an interesting question. Should someone have the right to information about your property if that right gives them a marginal advantage in knowing something about your property, such as the likelihood of a mineral or oil deposit, which, in turn, may let