May 10, 2002

Engineering Institute Will Drop Rule on Copyright Law

By DAN CARNEVALE

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers has bowed to pressure from scholars and will no longer require authors who write for its journals to sign a form promising not to violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The requirement upset many academics, who say the 1998 law is vaguely worded and difficult to enforce.

It has been controversial among computer-science researchers and others, because it prohibits distributing information about bypassing the