Samuelson P
Duke Law J. 1984 Sep(4):663-769.
Professor Samuelson casts a critical eye on the Final Report of the National Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works (CONTU) which recommended that copyright protection be extended to machine-readable versions of computer programs. CONTU appears to have misunderstood computer technology and misinterpreted copyright tradition in two significant respects. The Commission failed to take into account the historical importance of disclosure of the contents of protected works as a fundamental goal of both the copyright and patent laws. It also erroneously opined that the utilitarian character of a work was no bar to its copyrightability when both the statute and the case law make clear that utilitarian works are not copyrightable. Since computer programs in machine-readable forms do not disclose their contents and are inherently utilitarian, copyright protection for them is inappropriate. Congress acted on CONTU's recommendation without understanding the significance of these conceptual flaws. Professor Samuelson recommends the creation of a new form of intellectual property law specifically designed for machine-readable programs.
萨缪尔森教授以批判性的眼光审视了版权作品新技术使用全国委员会（CONTU）的最终报告，该报告建议将版权保护扩展至计算机程序的机器可读版本。CONTU在两个重要方面似乎误解了计算机技术并错误解读了版权传统。该委员会未能将公开受保护作品的内容作为版权法和专利法的基本目标这一历史重要性考虑在内。它还错误地认为，当法规和判例法都明确表明实用性作品不可版权化时，作品的实用性特征并不妨碍其获得版权。由于机器可读形式的计算机程序并不公开其内容且本质上具有实用性，因此对它们进行版权保护是不合适的。国会在未理解这些概念性缺陷的重要性的情况下，按照CONTU的建议采取了行动。萨缪尔森教授建议创建一种专门为机器可读程序设计的新型知识产权法。
