Digital Copyrights

Content owners argue that easy digital reproduction will be a scenario for disaster. In the digital marketplace, however, copyright holders may have better technological means to monitor usage and charge copyright payments for their properties than in physical markets. Computer-driven, networked markets, for example, allow BMI (the music licensing agency) to listen in all Web broadcasting by Web bots and compile detailed data for copyright payments. Software vendors can implement elaborate program to measure usage. (Can a book seller count how many times you have read the book, and charge you accordingly?)

Technologically, it may be possible to implement such a scheme. But, technological and legal means are not effective as long as there are incentives for people to duplicate. Instead, firms may want to plan their products in such a way that consumers have no incentives to duplicate and distribute. Examples: personalized products, which will be useless for others; frequent updating, making the window of possibility narrow; offering freeware, if something is impossible to prevent, but use freeware for marketing and other purposes.

During the Middle Age, unauthorized duplication was a fact of life (in monasteries no less). Copyright is a product of printing technology. In the digital age, digital copyright will evolve to address the same question (see the question below).

Charging for "a copy" is one system that has evolved from the printing technologies. Other possible system of collecting fees (for using someone else's idea) may depend on the value created by using that idea (e.g. instead of charging copyright or patent rights on a tractor, but on the value of crop each year raised by the tractor), or a flat fee for unlimited use, etc. The choice among these mechanisms will depend on reasonableness, politics, technical implementability, etc. There is not reason to believe that copyright based on printing technology will be sufficient for the digital age, except its overriding rationale for protection.

Copyright Articles	Okerson, A., 1996. Who owns digital works? Scientific American article. Dyson, E., 1995. Intellectual value. HotWired article. Barlow, J.P., 1996. A Cyberspace Independence Declaration. Barlow's reaction to the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996.
Internet Copyright Sites	Electronic Frontier Foundation Intellectual Property Online Archive. The Institute for Learning Technologies (ILT) Guide to Copyright. The Information Law Web: Copyright Court Cases. Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) Copyright Mailing List Archive
Texts of Copyright Laws	Full text of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 U.S.C.) is available at the U.S. Copyright Office. The Copyright Office also provides texts of the Berne Convention and the UCC. Full text of the Berne Convention.
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Conference Resources	Report of WIPO Conference in Geneva, Dec. 2-20, 1996, by International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). List and texts of preparatory documents by WIPO.