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Political Scientists and Public Policy Affecting Computer-Based Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2022

Nicholas Henry
Nicholas Henry*
Affiliation:
University of Georgia, Athens
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Extract

A recurring irony among political scientists is that they rarely display an interest in public policies which directly affect them. An example is the current national effort to formulate public policies for new information technologies, notably those technologies which are vital to academic research in the sciences and social sciences, such as computer-based information storage' and retrieval systems, photocopiers, and microduplication techniques. For almost two decades, lobbyists, public bureaucrats, and congressmen have been engaged in a formal and continuing attempt to revise radically the present principal expression of public policy for new information technologies, the Copyright Act of 1909.

It is my purpose in this essay to explain cursorily how the copyright concept affects the uses and users of the information technology that would seem to have the greatest utility for research in political science — the computer — and review the status of efforts to change the copyright principle in such a way as to accommodate more comprehensively the new information technologies. As we shall see, how copyright law is revised may alter traditional patterns of knowledge use and its generation in political science.

Type
Research Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 7 , Issue 4 , Fall 1974 , pp. 377 - 381
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1974

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Footnotes

*

My thanks to Professor Bruce A. Campbell of the University of Georgia for his helpful critique in writing this paper; final responsibility Is, of course, mine.

References

1 Kaminstein, Abraham L., Copyright Law Revision, Part 5, 1964 Revision Bill with Discussions and Comments, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., September, 1965 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1965), p. 63.Google Scholar

For a thorough and very recent analysis of copyright, computers, and the multitude of other issues of the revision effort, I can recommend the impressive study by the Cambridge Research Institute. Fifteen scholarly organizations participated in the study, and the American Political Science Association was not among them. See: Cambridge Research Institute, Omnibus Copyright Revision: Comparative Analysis of the Issues, Hanson, Arthur B., ed. (Washington: American Society for Information Science, 1973), especially pp. 87–100.Google Scholar Other recent works of note addressing the issue are: Bush, George P., ed., Technology and Copyright: An Annotated Bibliography and Source Materials (Mt. Airy, Maryland: Lomond Systems, Inc., 1972).Google Scholar Cohen, Richard E., “Communications Report/Copyright Changes Given Impetus by New Technology,” National Journal Reports, (May 4, 1974), pp. 659–667.Google Scholar Henry, Nicholas L., “Copyright, Public Policy, and Information Technology,” Science, 183 (1 February, 1974), pp. 384–391.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Confusing the revision situation is the attitude of the judiciary concerning technology and copyright. The only court case in this country addressing the issue deals with the role of photocopiers in federal information systems, and it has yet to be finally resolved. In November, 1973, the U.S. Court of Claims overturned the recommendation of its commissioner, and ruled by a four-to-three decision that the copyrights held by a publisher of biomedicai journals had not been infringed by the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health Library when these agencies photocopied the publisher's journals and disseminated the copies to users without permission. The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal, and its decision may impact on the outcome of the congressional revision effort. For the definitive study of the case, see Marilyn G. McCormick, compiler. The Williams & Wilkins Case: The Williams & Wilkins Company v. The United States (New York: Science Associates/International, Inc., 1974), which is a compendium of all relevant documents.

2 Federal Council for Science and Technology, Committee on Scientific and Technical Information, Ad Hoc Task Group on Legal Aspects Involved in National Information Systems, The Copyright Law As It Relates to National Information Systems and Programs, A Study by the Ad Hoc Task Group … PF-175 618, July, 1967 (Washington: Federal Council for Science and Technology), p. 6.

3 Oettinger, Anthony G., “Statement,” Copyright Law Revision, Hearings before the Subcomittee on Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., Pursuant to S. Res 37 on S. 597, Part 2, April 4, 1967 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1967), p. 588.Google Scholar

4 U.S. Congress, House, Committee on the Judiciary, Copyright Law Revision, Report No. 83 to accompany H.R. 2512, 90th Cong., 1st Sess. March 8, 1967 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1967), p. 25.Google Scholar

5 Federal Council for Science and Technology, op. cit., p. 10.

6 Gipe, George M., Nearer to the Dust: Copyright and the Machine (Baltimore, Maryland: Williams & Wilkins Company, 1967), pp. 181–184.Google Scholar

7 Breyer, Stephen, “The Uneasy Case for Copyright: A Study of Books, Photocopies, and Computer Programs,” Harvard Law Review, 84 (December, 1970), pp. 344–345.CrossRefGoogle Scholar