The Right to Read | Page 4

him to ask for help, that could mean she loved him too.
Dan resolved the dilemma by doing something even more unthinkable--he lent her the
computer, and told her his password. This way, if Lissa read his books, Central Licensing
would think he was reading them. It was still a crime, but the SPA would not
automatically find out about it. They would only find out if Lissa reported him.

Of course, if the school ever found out that he had given Lissa his own password, it
would be curtains for both of them as students, regardless of what she had used it for.
School policy was that any interference with their means of monitoring students'
computer use was grounds for disciplinary action. It didn't matter whether you did
anything harmful--the offense was making it hard for the administrators to check on you.
They assumed this meant you were doing something else forbidden, and they did not
need to know what it was.
Students were not usually expelled for this--not directly. Instead they were banned from
the school computer systems, and would inevitably fail all their classes.
Later, Dan would learn that this kind of university policy started only in the 1980s, when
university students in large numbers began using computers. Previously, universities
maintained a different approach to student discipline; they punished activities that were
harmful, not those that merely raised suspicion.
Lissa did not report Dan to the SPA. His decision to help her led to their marriage, and
also led them to question what they had been taught about piracy as children. The couple
began reading about the history of copyright, about the Soviet Union and its restrictions
on copying, and even the original United States Constitution. They moved to Luna, where
they found others who had likewise gravitated away from the long arm of the SPA. When
the Tycho Uprising began in 2062, the universal right to read soon became one of its
central aims.
Author's Note
The right to read is a battle being fought today. Although it may take 50 years for our
present way of life to fade into obscurity, most of the specific laws and practices
described above have already been proposed--either by the Clinton Administration or by
publishers.
There is one exception: the idea that the FBI and Microsoft will keep the root passwords
for personal computers. This is an extrapolation from the Clipper chip and similar Clinton
Administration key-escrow proposals, together with a long-term trend: computer systems
are increasingly set up to give absentee operators control over the people actually using
the computer system.
The SPA, which actually stands for Software Publisher's Association, is not today an
official police force. Unofficially, it acts like one. It invites people to inform on their
coworkers and friends; like the Clinton Administration, it advocates a policy of collective
responsibility whereby computer owners must actively enforce copyright or be punished.
The SPA is currently threatening small Internet service providers, demanding they permit
the SPA to monitor all users. Most ISPs surrender when threatened, because they cannot
afford to fight back in court. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 1 Oct 96, D3.) At least one
ISP, Community ConneXion in Oakland CA, refused the demand and was actually sued.
The SPA is said to have dropped this suit recently, but they are sure to continue the
campaign in various other ways.
The university security policies described above are not imaginary. For example, a
computer at one Chicago-area university prints this message when you log in (quotation
marks are in the original):
"This system is for the use of authorized users only. Individuals using this computer
system without authority or in the excess of their authority are subject to having all their
activities on this system monitored and recorded by system personnel. In the course of

monitoring individuals improperly using this system or in the course of system
maintenance, the activities of authorized user may also be monitored. Anyone using this
system expressly consents to such monitoring and is advised that if such monitoring
reveals possible evidence of illegal activity or violation of University regulations system
personnel may provide the evidence of such monitoring to University authorities and/or
law enforcement officials."

This is an interesting approach to the Fourth Amendment: pressure most everyone to
agree, in advance, to waive their rights under it.

References

The administration's "White Paper": Information Infrastructure Task Force, Intellectual
Property and the National Information Infrastructure: The Report of the Working Group
on Intellectual Property Rights (1995). An explanation of the White Paper: The
Copyright Grab, Pamela Samuelson, Wired, Jan. 1996
Sold Out, James Boyle, New York Times, 31 March 1996
Public Data or Private Data, Washington Post, 4 Nov 1996 Union for the Public
Domain--a new organization which aims to resist and reverse the overextension of