December 10, 1996

President William J. Clinton
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

As CEOs of America's leading Internet, online, and communications companies, we write to express our great concern about draft language in the "Basic Proposal for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works" and the so- called "New Instrument," supported by your Administration, currently under consideration at the World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO") Diplomatic Conference in Geneva.

Our companies have significant intellectual property interests to protect on the NII and GII, and we strongly support the development of all future technological measures that will help to prevent infringements of copyright in the online environment. We are supportive of the Administration's goal of updating the Berne Convention for the digital age. However, this goal must not be achieved in a way that severely limits development of the Internet/online medium as a widely accessible, low-cost means of communication.

Our companies build and operate the "Information Highway" that figures so prominently in your vision of the 21st Century. We provide the facilities for hundreds of millions of Internet communications that flow over our networks each day. These transmissions travel in digital form and are often compressed, split among separate packets, and/or encrypted, each of which forecloses any practical way of knowing their content. Unfortunately, in their current form, Articles 7 and 10 of this draft treaty would create and codify new and significant exclusive rights over transmission of information and over the operation of computer servers that relay information on the Internet by making an automatic, ephemeral copy of a communication while sending it toward its destination.

The exclusive rights created by these Articles could result in making service providers liable without knowledge for every potentially infringing communication on the Internet. Such potential liabilities would force us to monitor third-party communications. Not only is this technically and economically impractical, it would require us to violate individual citizens' privacy rights. The result would be sharply increased prices for Internet/online services, reduced privacy for users, and reduced connectivity among "information have nots" in our society and throughout the world.

We have negotiated with all stakeholders in an attempt to address these concerns, while preserving all the important substantive features of the draft treaty. Unfortunately, our attempts to seek a balanced resolution have thus far been rejected by the Administration. _Unless Articles 7 and 10 of the draft treaty address these critical concerns, we will have no choice but to work to prevent its ratification by Congress.

Some members of your Administration understand that we are correct on the merits of this debate. Others contend that the treaty would not affect the issue of liability. It is important to understand, however, that the proposed treaty would be self-executing in many countries. Further, Articles 7 and 10 may be perceived as precluding protections from liability for conduit providers and limitations on liability for service providers who act in a timely fashion to "take down" material to protect the rights of content owners.

We urge you to reconsider the Administration's current position before the WIPO Convention makes a final determination on the issue. Rational policy, simple fairness, and consistency with your Administration's many positions on the importance of the Internet require nothing less.

William L. Schrader
Chairman, President and CEO
PSINet, Inc.

Steve Case
Chairman and CEO
America Online, Inc.

Raymond W. Smith
Chairman and CEO
Bell Atlantic Corporation

John L. Clendenin
Chairman and CEO
BellSouth Corporation

Robert Massey
President and CEO
CompuServe Incorporated

Gerald H. Taylor
CEO
MCI Communications Corporation

James Q. Crowe
Chairman and CEO
MFS Communications Company, Inc.

David W. Garrison
President, CEO and Chairman
Netcom On-Line Communication Services, Inc.

Ivan Seidenberg
Chairman and CEO
NYNEX

Paul W. DeLacey
President and CEO
Prodigy, Inc.

John Sidgmore
President and CEO
UUNet Technologies, Inc.

cc: Vice President Albert Gore, Jr.
Secretary Mickey Kantor
Ira Magaziner
Greg Simon
Dan Tarullo