TREATIES NEGOTIATED TO EXTEND INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT LAW.

Byline: Seth Schiesel The New York Times

Negotiators from some 160 countries reached agreement Friday in Geneva on the most sweeping extension of international copyright law in 25 years, the chief U.S. representative said, paving the way to broaden protections for the creators of art, software and music into cyberspace.

Supporters of the two new treaties, which must be ratified by the U.S. Senate and other lawmakers around the world before they can go into effect, say the changes will encourage record companies, computer programmers, and - farther down the road - even television and movie studios to distribute their wares over the Internet.

A contentious third proposal, which would have extended copyright protection to computerized data bases that provide sports scores, telephone listings and the like, was abandoned because of objections from other countries. The U.S. delegation gave in on that issue to make the agreement possible.

In an 11th-hour deal, telephone companies, Internet-access providers and free-speech advocates persuaded negotiators to delete wording that would have treated even temporary computer copies automatically created to view graphics and other information from the Internet as possible violations of international copyright law.

``These treaties we've been working on will be the cornerstone of international economic law for the information and technological age of the 21st century,'' Bruce Lehman, the commissioner of patents and trademarks and the lead U.S. negotiator, said at a news conference in Geneva.

Negotiators reached the deal late Friday night after three weeks of talks under the auspices of the World Intellectual Property Organization, a U.N. body.

To make original works easily and widely available, the treaties are aimed at balancing the interests of writers, artists and other creators of copyright material against those of users and distributors of digital information.

Once ratified, the two treaties - one covering literary and artistic works including films and computer software, the other covering recorded music - would grant copyright owners protection for distributing their work in digital form. As strong as U.S. law may be, the global nature of the Internet has given some companies pause.

``This treaty would for the first time create international recognition of rights already in U.S. law,'' Lehman said in a telephone interview. ``If instead of going down to Egghead or Blockbuster to buy a piece of software or rent a movie, you want to download it to the computer, that's not covered'' under current international treaties, he said.

``If you're a big content provider and you're planning a big marketing strategy to distribute product on the Internet, you're not going to do it if there's no law. Now there will be.''

The United States, worried that American music, movie and software producers could be harmed because digital information can be so easily duplicated and distributed around the world, led the campaign for tightening international copyright laws.

Mark Traphagen, vice president and counsel for the Software Publishers Association, said piracy costs the U.S. software industry $13 billion each year in lost revenue.

``From the incidents we've seen, Internet piracy can really have a devastating effect on a company, because so many copies can be downloaded for nothing,'' Traphagen said. ``That's why this treaty is so important. We want to make sure that all these countries building information infrastructures are on board for protecting software.''

The Recording Industry Association of America estimates that illegal copying costs the $40 billion U.S. music industry as much as $2 billion each year in lost revenues. While little of that piracy now occurs on the Internet, Hilary Rosen, the association's president, welcomed the agreement as an important bulwark against future threats.

``I think it's a very good deal for American music lovers and Internet users and it's a very good deal for artists and record companies,'' Rosen said. ``When copyrights are strengthened, the U.S. really benefits because we are the largest exporter of music. We're completely satisfied.''

To reach the deal, experts said, the Clinton administration was forced to retreat from what it had originally sought. An array of academic, scientific, consumer and technical organizations expressed concerns that attempts to extend copyright protection too rigidly in cyberspace could interfere with access to data and stifle the growth of the Internet.

``What they came up with protects everyone involved,'' said Julian Millstein, a lawyer representing several Internet-access providers. ``I think the treaties are very good.''

The Patents and Trademark Office, with strong support from Hollywood, circulated a proposal last winter that could have granted copyright holders increased rights over what are known as transitory copies, which are made automatically by computers while downloading material from the Internet.

But that idea fell flat on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers objected to the proposal. During the Geneva negotiations, the U.S. delegation revived the concept, only to provoke a blast of criticism from civil libertarians and the computer industry.

``Before substantial pressure was brought to bear on the U.S. delegation, that delegation was trying to do an end run around Congress,'' said Pamela Samuelson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley.