period of time if they are run on a computer whose serial number differs from that of the computer for which the software was bought. This would involve specific instructions in the computer program telling the program to stop working when an internal clock in the computer reaches a particular time and date. "If a program fails at the very beginning," says Reid, "people often are ready to deal with it and fix it so that it runs. A time bomb is much more devastating. After a few months, you come to depend on a program, and you have forgotten how it works." But not every small computer has a serial number, and not every samll computer has a clock. Moreover, pirates could figure out how to change serial numbers and set clocks back. So these new schemes are hardly foolproof. Some manufacturers of nongame software have decided that the best strategy for now is to simply give up the idea of copy protection-and they are using this as a selling point. Mark Pelczarski of Penguin Software in Chicago says his sales have increased fivefold since he dropped all copy protection last February. Some of that increase is due to increased advertising and more distributions, he says, but he has no doubt that dropping copy protection played a role. Pelczarski says he decided to forego copy protection in part because of his own experience as a programmer. He needed multiple backup copies of important diskettes, and he liked to modify programs to suit his needs-something that can't be done when diskettes are copy protected. "I found that I was using programs that were not copy protected even though there were better programs on the market that were protected," he says. Beagle Brothers Micro Software also advertises that it does not use copy protection. "It's a superb selling point. People can take our disks, alter them, and customize them," says Bert Kersey of Beagle Brothers. "I just think that's what it's coming to. Most people can make copies of copy protected software, so why copy protect?" But those who sell unprotected software are still in the minority. Ken Klein of Stoneware, Inc. concedes that protected software can be broken, but "everything can be broken, just like all locks can be picked. I think copy protection basically keeps honest people honest." Jerry Diamond of VisiCorp, which makes the enormously popular program VisiCalc, agrees. "There is no dobut that discouraging people from copying makes sense. It makes no sense to make it easy for people to break the law." Most manufacturers, in fact, still see copy protection as the only way out. And while no one is entirely satisfied with protection schemes that now exist, there is no consensus on what, if anything, to do. This breeds pessimism in people like John Gill. "My feeling," he says, "is that there's not going to be a solution." If he's right, it may be the first problem the computer industry has found uncrackable. Information Systems and the Role of Law: Some Prospects Reprinted from the Stanford Law Review, Volume 25, No. 3, February 1973 1973 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Reviewed BOOKS Information Systems and the Role of Law: Some Prospects Paul Goldstein* COMPUTERS, COMMUNICATIONS, AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST. Edited by Martin Greenberger. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Press. 1971. xix+315 pages. $12.50. Developing alongside the modern concern for environmental quality are some newer issues of resource management. Unlike problems of environmental quality, which stem in large part from decisions respecting the production, distribution and use of goods, these new resource management issues stem from the economy's service sector and, more specifically, from dramatic increases in the production and distribution of information. For some of these new issues, solutions already worked out in the context of environmental planning will doubtless prove apt. For most of the problems raised by the burgeoning information technologies, however, the situation now is comparable to the one that faced environmental planners in the early 1960's: technological developments must be predicted, consequences assessed, strategies mapped. Prospects for the development and management of information systems form the concern of Computers, Communications, and the Public Interest, a collection of eight lectures, with attendant comments and discussion, presented under the joint auspices of the Johns Hopkins University and The Brookings Institution between September 1969 and May 1970. The range of issues considered is indicated by the topics addressed: "Large Time Sharing Networks," "Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World," "Communications in the National Decision-Making Process," "Education in Modern Society," "Civil Liberties and Computerized Data Systems," "Property Rights Under the New Technology," "Developing National Policy for Computers and Communications," and "Man and the Machine: Prospects for the Human Enterprise.”1 Under the series' format, B.A. 1964, Brandeis University; LL.B. 1967, Columbia University. Professor of Law, State University of New York at Buffalo. Visiting Associate Professor of Law, Stanford University. The author is grateful to Professor John Barton, Stanford Law School, for his helpful comments on an earlier draft. 1. For purposes of convenience, these topic headings will be treated as the titles of the respective main papers. 450 STANFORD LAW REVIEW [Vol. 25: Page 449 each main paper was followed successively by prepared comments delivered by each of two discussants, discussion among the three participants centering on questions from the audience, and informal dinner discussion. many The papers and commentaries assembled in this book are, on the whole, first rate. At their least impressive, they rehearse developments in the field under discussion and restate the major policy issues. At their best, they move present thinking in their respective fields a step forward. What of the papers lack, however, is a sense for the richness and variety of social institutions, law among them, and a sense for the possibilities of managing information systems through other than the present institutional structures -copyright or patent protection for information's production, for example, or FCC regulation of its transmission. Also unexamined are possible alternatives to present institutional consequences-treatment of privacy as a priceless interest, for example, or exclusion of the poor from access to the benefits of technological advance. With the exception of this last, these omissions are not cause for criticism, for they fall outside the intended scope of most of the papers. Yet, if these omissions provide no fair occasion for criticism, they do underscore the need for canvassing institutional alternatives and for identifying some of the policy implications of choosing or retaining-one institution over another. This Review provides some directions for such a canvass. Part I pictures, quite generally, some developments in information technology that can be expected to occupy the remainder of this century; it identifies, too, the central resource to be managed: time. Part II considers the role of property and regulatory institutions in the new information setting; Part III, some prospective changes in alignment between individual and society. I. TECHNOLOGY AND TIME Some of the developments forecast for the information technologies can be suggested briefly. At the core of future information systems will probably lie cable networks carrying an abundance of channels into homes and offices; eighty or more cable channels are now technically feasible and sharply increased capacities are in prospect. And, while cable systems presently serve comparatively few American homes, penetration is expected to 2. The projections employed in this description are drawn primarily from B. BAGDIKIAN, THE INFORMATION Machines ix-xxxvi (1971); D. PARKHILL, THE Challenge of the Computer UTILITY 153-71 (1966); SLOAN COMM. ON CABLE COMMUNICATIONS, ON THe Cable 35-46 (1971); D. Little & T. Gordon, Some Trends Likely to Affect American Society in the Next Several Decades, Apr. 1971, at 43-44 (Institute for the Future, Working Paper WP-16); Baran, Some Changes in Information Technology Affecting Marketing in the Year 2000, in CHANGING MARKETING SYSTEMS 76-87 (R. Moyer ed. 1967); Parker & Dunn, Information Technology: Its Social Potential, 176 SCIENCE 1392-99 (1972). The prospects outlined here, and those identified in the course of this Review, are skewed toward the more conservative forecasts. February 1973] BOOKS REVIEWED 451 reach between 40 and 60 percent by 1980. Nor will the services provided be confined to television's customary one-way transmission mode: it is estimated that by 1990 reactive, subscriber-response systems, enabling the viewer to order up desired information from his facility and, indeed, himself to broadcast information, will be in common use. Developments in cable will be closely linked to developments in other technologies: communications satellites can be expected to facilitate national and international networking of programs and messages; computer systems, themselves employing cable as a medium for data transmission, may, through their message switching capacities, aid cable users in the selection of information. Facsimile transmission-already available in rudimentary form over the telephone lines in major cities-and electronic video recording also seem likely to play an important role, significantly enlarging the business, educational, and entertainment uses of the home information console. A virtually boundless, possibly overwhelming, amount of information may eventually be transmitted simultaneously over the cable. The weather reports, teletyped news bulletins, and stock market quotation services presently occupying some of cable's surplus channels may some day be joined by programs, among others, devoted to entertainment, education, and vocational and avocational pursuits. Some of this programming the viewer will pay for directly while other programs will probably be supported by advertisers or by government subsidy. Subscriber-response systems-presently confined to the telephone system and to cable-based home burglar and fire alarm systems and utility meter reading devices-may come to incorporate some of the functions now discharged in schoolhouse and university and, through the retrieval on demand of centrally stored information, some of the functions today served by libraries. Health care information and delivery systems may link doctors to patients, to other doctors, to university centers, and to libraries. Shopping and news services, enabling the consumer to summon precisely the news or sales information he desires and to enjoy increasingly more detailed information at will, may develop as may new varieties of political conduct-instantaneous polling of the electorate, perhaps, and, probably much more important, enhanced opportunities for direct individual participation in community decisionmaking. The fundamental difference between planning for environmental quality and planning for information systems lies in the nature of the resource to be managed. For environmental policy, the relevant resources are air, water and land. For information policy, the relevant resource is time. With drastic and continuing increases in amounts of available information, planning's critical task will be to assure that individuals and institutions, pos |