The Existence of the Digital Technology - Essay Example

Student Name: Instructor name: Unit Name: Date The Digital Age Has Rendered Copyright Obsolete Introduction The use of digital technology has been viewed as a major setback to copyright in the current modern society. Copyright laws were established to ensure protection of copyright owners’ works by deterring unauthorised persons from making copies of a copyright content without receiving approval (Patterson and Lindberg, 1991). However, after the invention of digital technology, copyright has been termed outdated and most have called for enforcement of proper mechanisms that can guard against piracy considering the current modern society. In the modern society copyright has become an essential issue of discussion globally due to the great prevalence of digital technology and the influx of internet into which makes it quite ineffective to employ the use of copyright. The truth is digital technology has raised important questions concerning copyright. What role does digital technology play in protecting copyright works? Has the digital age contributed to copyright being termed outdated? Does copyright have a chance in this era of digital technology? Can digital technology be employed to protect intellectual property? Therefore my focus in this paper is to explore the level at which copyright has been rendered obsolete due to digital technology and recommend possible solutions to protection of intellectual property. Digital technology and Copyright The copy right law gives the copyright owner exclusive rights to protect his/her creative work by preventing unauthorized people from making copies, distributing copies, displaying copies, and sending copies without approval from the original owner. According to the copyright laws anyone who makes use of those rights that are exclusively bestowed upon the owner has violated the rights of the copyright hence need for legal action. However with the invention of digital technology it has become difficult for authors, film makers, musicians and other people to protect their original work from piracy. In this era of digital technology people are able to effectively take works that is copyright protected use it or even send it anywhere without being caught. However those who wish to protect their own creative work can also employ the use of digital technology to protect their work. This can be done by employing the use of digital rights management (DRM) that allows owners to use passwords, watermarks or encryption to prevent unauthorized people from illegally accessing and using their work without prior consent from owners. However, to some extent digital rights management (DRM), can unfairly limit consumers from making use of the copyrighted work that they have legally acquired hence making the use of DRMs a challenge to consumers. This has been evident in cases whereby consumers are not able to make CD copies nor are they able to play legally acquired DVDs on DVD players that have not been authorized (Peitz and Waelbroeck, 2004). The Property of Copyright Copyright was a very essential concept in the analogue economy and will continue being particularly very important in the modern digital economy. Creation of new ideas and new creative works should be encouraged in the society as it promotes development hence improving people’s livelihoods. Creating and innovating new works however requires a lot of commitment from the owners and therefore the need for motivation hence without such encouragements people tend to pull away from creating more works. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development has particularly argued that copyright supports creativity by giving individuals and the creative industries in which they are involved strong incentives to invest time, effort and money in creating, producing and distributing works. Copyright assures the ownership among creators hence they feel that they are secure financially, socially and economically. Copyright is a property right that excludes others from unauthorised copying hence encourages the principle of originality. These principles ensure that copyright only protects original creative works but at the same time allowing the sharing ideas, facts and information as a way of encouraging people to engage in more creative works. Professor Edmund Kitch at University of Virginia argues, copyright allows limited protection of owners so as to create works with similar distinctiveness as those created in movies, novels and TV shows (Kitch, 2000). Therefore, copyright forbids unauthorised copying and distribution of contents but at the same time encourages creativity among other people who are especially inspired by previous works. Therefore protection of copyright is helpful to both the copyright owner and the consumers because it ensures fair and productive competition and at the same time provides incentives to creativity. In this digital age one is able to efficiently and easily record a program using a VCR without the knowledge of the copyright owner. In addition, even if the owner is made aware it will be very expensive for the owner to try protecting his/her work against all existing program recorders. These actions have therefore raised concerns from copyright owners on the dangers of making copies of their contents without their formal consent hence violating the rights of copyright owners whereby they are the only ones legally allowed to make copies of their works. However as Lewis Hyde acknowledges this could result in the violation of consumer rights where they are not allowed to make copy of the content they have legally purchased. The strong craving of limiting the use of contents by consumers has raised intense debates on the legalities of the actions of the copyright owners to put such absurd jurisdictions on the use of contents that have been legally acquired by consumers. Hyde gives an example of the e-book adaptation of Alice in Wonderland which contains the ominous warning that it cannot be read aloud. He terms this rules as ridiculous and unrealistic rules that have been put forward by copyright owners with the intent of protecting their work hence the need of understanding that some copyright laws that had been enacted in an era when digital technology was not in existence have now become outdated and need to be abolished. He proposes the adoption of strategies that embrace the existence of digital technology but at the same time promote fair use and profitability. Previous technological innovations such as photocopying machines and VCRs raised debates on protection of intellectual property therefore necessitating for mechanisms that could ensure a balance between consumers and copyright owners. Today the use of digital technology has evoked intense debates among many copyright owners claiming that their intellectual property rights have been deprived hence discouraging them from creating more works. Critics have responded by arguing that copyright law as well as patent law has effectively been marred and has seemed to favour copyright owners. Apparently, the digital technologies have changed the very nature of intellectual property to its very core to such an extent that we need to totally lessen intellectual property rules. These critics are of the view that any data that is transmitted in digital or electronic formats should not solely be controlled by copyright owners because they are concerned that the technologies employed for copy protection can easily overstep their boundaries more than current legal protections and lead to the collapse of fair use rights that most people around the world now expect. They also fear that these technologies threaten free speech. In the United States, for instance, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, a person’s intent to infringe is inapplicable and instead, someone involved in distributing or developing technology for uses like research work will be charged for committing a crime legally. Digital rights management (DRMs) This is a form of security used by copyright owners to protect their own creative works from being pirated deterring unauthorised people from making copies of the owner’s work. Digital rights management (DRMs) can be enforced in various ways. Use of DVD Content Scramble System (CSS) commonly employed by movie and consumer electronics companies for DVDs that allows the use of DVDS on DVD players with matching regional coding. Television broadcasts have employed the use of Satellite television signals which are encoded. The receiver decodes the signal through the use of a decoder chip then converts it into a format which that specific TV set can be able to read. Additionally, to charge customers for pay-per-view events Satellite TV employs the use of a DRM scheme. There have been some efforts in the music business to include DRM as was witnessed with Charley Pride who was the first in the US to release a copy-protected CD. Digital technology effectively provides copyright owners with the power to have full control over their works through DRM systems. In summary, these systems give owners the power to control who accesses what, at what place, at what time, for what length of time and at what price. This works through the use of a contract and is a practice is that is on the rise. In essence, digital technology allows owners to regulate access to the book and its contents, which is like selling the book then attaching a cost for it to be read or looked at. Therefore it is important to consider the fact that even though digital technology posses some challenges to copy right it can also be employed by copyright owners to protect their original works. DRM offers protection against making of copies illegally therefore rights management have to some extent been able to curb piracy. Contrary to the views that DRMs can pose a challenge to consumers by infringing their rights, digital rights management can enable consumers to pay only for what they have used. In addition, some DRM can allow the consumers to pay for what they have consumed at their own convenient time at no extra charge hence benefiting the consumer. DRM has also enabled consumers not willing to pay for full access of a particular content to only make affordable payments on what they want to use at a particular time after which access to the full content is denied. This has been especially beneficial in the use of particular sections of a book or journal instead of having to by the whole book which may not be beneficial. DRM has overall made distribution and delivery cheaper and faster, hence its increasing popularity (Kurth, 2002). However even with the benefits that data rights management can offer, they are not completely able to eliminate current challenges posed by digital technology to the copyright owners hence efforts should be made in adopting a better digital rights management scheme that can offer best solutions to the problems faced by copyright owners. This because the current existing digital rights management schemes have been viewed by many that they could hold back innovations and therefore discourage creation of creative works. Lewis Hyde in his book, acknowledges that to some extent digital technology has rendered copyright obsolete hence emphasises on the need to protect the works of copyright owners by adopting a workable and logical strategy that is accommodative in the current modern society that has embraced digital technology. There have intense debates that extensive and efficient use of digital rights management can influence people to ignore the best long-term possible solutions that can be adopted to protect copyright work. Most copyright owners have argued that in order to continue with their innovations and creative works they need to be protected from piracy by either completely eliminating piracy or compensated whenever they feel that their rights as copyright owners have been violated (Strowel, 2009). However critics have insisted that consumers spend a lot of money in purchasing copyright contents therefore compensating for the payments made to distributors, recording companies, managers, advertisers and others involved in the distribution sequence hence insisting that copyright does not benefit the distributor significantly but instead the one who really benefits is the copy right owner. Therefore advocates for digital technology have defended the role played by digital technology claiming that it helps reduce the costs incurred during distribution (Strowel, 2009). Possible Solutions The possible solutions that are enforced should endeavour to protect intellectual property and also ensure that the rights of consumers are not violated in the expense of copyright owners. The solutions should therefore create a balance between the consumers and owners therefore encouraging creation of creative works. Many people support the idea of the protection of intellectual property but there are several debates that occur in relation to the period copyright owners should be given those exclusive rights; whether they should be bestowed for a limited period or for a lifetime even when the owner has died. However this depends on individual nations and the kind of copyright laws they have put in place. However copyright laws that give the owner exclusive rights go beyond a lifetime of the original owner should be discouraged because they offer diminishing incentives for that individual to make creative works. Indeed, the Supreme Court in the U S has opposed the 1998 ‘Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act’ which gave the author protection rights for a lifetime. Jessica Litman has proposed one possible solution to the challenge of making copies of digital contents by calling for amendments to on the exclusive rights on copyright owners. She points out that owners should shift their focus from worrying whether their works is to be pirated but should instead focus on how to utilise to sell their works. Litman argues that through her proposal, individual file sharing wouldn’t be deployable, but possibly Napster’s facilitation of file sharing in wide scale would happen due to its major interference with the commercial opportunities of rights holders. If a move like this is made then it would restore sanity among the public and ensure that the laws put in place are in line with the people’s comprehension of the balance between copyright and consumers and ensure fair use. It should be clear that trying to put restrictions or imposing bans on the digital technology cannot solve the current challenges with copyright. Therefore realistic solutions should be provided keeping in mind that the digital technology is here to stay and protests to have file sharing banned came swift and fast early on. Indeed the reaction to Napster in the USA was a clear case study of original owners putting pressure on the government to impose restrictions on file-sharing technologies to control piracy. However this evidently did not solve the problem with piracy but instead there is extensive peer-to- peer file sharing which has made the situation worse (Litman, 2006) Misconceptions about the Digital Technology and Copyright In spite of the basic understanding of the importance of copyright on development critics assert that copyright has become outdated in the digital age and that strategies that embrace digital technology without necessarily putting too much emphasis on protection of intellectual property are necessary. This is because even with copyright laws people are likely to break the laws and copy and distributes contents illegally without being caught hence it will be useless to spend so much on a concept that has become obsolete. There are misguided beliefs that digital world would result in a lot of changes completely and render copyright obsolete therefore discouraging creative works a move that would slow down innovation and development in the society. A world where people would be different and not engage in free riding, theft, violation of contract, and other actionable wrongs that create harm simply because they embrace digital technology. However those are misguided misconceptions that should be shunned in the society. The digital age will not significantly have a negative impact on intellectual property since other methods that employ the use of digital technology such as DRMs can be employed to protect creative work. Therefore the same concept of protection of intellectual property is a requirement for better investment. In fact in the digital era that may somehow encourage people to copy and distribute creative goods effectively and at ease a proper and logical mechanism to protect intellectual property is essential to facilitate economic growth. Conclusion The existence of the digital technology in the current modern society has rendered copyright obsolete to a certain extent. However we have to agree that the same technology has been very beneficial to both the copyright owners and consumers. Since we cannot eliminate the use of digital technology from the society for obvious reasons it is essential that society make use of strategies such as digital rights management to provide solutions to the current challenges that copyright owners are facing. Digital rights management can provide correct and appropriate mechanisms to help protect copyright owners at same time offer assistance in terms of distribution and payment. Enforcement of the correct and appropriate digital rights management schemes will encourage creative work and allow fair competition while simultaneously protecting the rights of consumers and hence creating a balance between consumers and copyright owners. I believe that digital technology is a necessary evil hence instead of spending a lot resources in trying to prove how the digital technology has posed a challenge to protection of creative works the concentration should be shifted to providing a clear mechanism of adopting an appropriate strategy under the digital age that can promote the protection of copyright works at the same time ensure that the rights of consumers are not infringed in the process. In a nutshell, the principal objective of the mechanism to be adopted should ascertain that copyright law continues to encourage creative pursuits in the World Wide Web while still creating room for considerable and fair access to copyright material by using new technologies. References Barker, George R. (2009). Copyright and the Digital Economy. ANU Centre for Law and Economics Working Paper No. 3: Centre for Law and Economics Australian National University (Updated, June 2010). Besek, June. (2004). Anti‐Circumvention Laws and Copyright: A Report from the Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts. The Columbia Journal of Law & Arts, p.513 Crews, Wayne and Thierer, Adam. (2004). The Digital Dirty Dozen: The Most Destructive High-Tech Legislative Measures of the 107th Congress. Policy analysis Kitch, Edmund. (2000). Elementary and Persistent Errors in the Economic Analysis of Intellectual Property. Vanderbilt Law Review 1727, p. 1730 Kurth, Trampas A. (2002). Digital Rights Management: An Overview of the Public Policy Solutions to Protecting Creative Works in a Digital Age Litman, Jessica. (2006). Digital Copyright. Journal of High Technology. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, pp. 216. Reviewed by Jenna Hentoff Suffolk University Law School Patterson, L.R and Lindberg, S. W. (1991). The Nature of Copyright. pp.19-46 Peitz, M and Waelbroeck, P. (2004). The effect of internet piracy on music sales: Cross‐section Evidence. Review of Economic Research on Copyright Issues, 2, pp. 71‐79 Rev, Vand. L. (2009). Does Copyright Law Promote Creativity? An Empirical Analysis of Copyright’s Bounty. 63. 1669 (with J. Sung & Y. Fan) Shannon, Victoria. Does digital file sharing render copyright obsolete? Published: Sunday, June 3, 2007 Shih Ray Ku, Raymond. (2002). The Creative Destruction of Copyright: Napster and the Economics of Digital Technology. 69 U. Chi. L. Rev. 263 Strowel, Alain. (2009). Internet Piracy as a Wake Up Call for Copyright Law Makers – Is the “Graduated Response” A Good Reply? The WIPO Journal 75, pp.85‐86. Torstenssen, David and Pugatch, Meir. (2008). The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: How Have Policy Makers Dealt with the Growing Complexity of the Intellectual Property Debate and the Issue of Online Piracy. Read More

Creating and innovating new works however requires a lot of commitment from the owners and therefore the need for motivation hence without such encouragements people tend to pull away from creating more works. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development has particularly argued that copyright supports creativity by giving individuals and the creative industries in which they are involved strong incentives to invest time, effort and money in creating, producing and distributing works. Copyright assures the ownership among creators hence they feel that they are secure financially, socially and economically.

Copyright is a property right that excludes others from unauthorised copying hence encourages the principle of originality. These principles ensure that copyright only protects original creative works but at the same time allowing the sharing ideas, facts and information as a way of encouraging people to engage in more creative works. Professor Edmund Kitch at University of Virginia argues, copyright allows limited protection of owners so as to create works with similar distinctiveness as those created in movies, novels and TV shows (Kitch, 2000).

Therefore, copyright forbids unauthorised copying and distribution of contents but at the same time encourages creativity among other people who are especially inspired by previous works. Therefore protection of copyright is helpful to both the copyright owner and the consumers because it ensures fair and productive competition and at the same time provides incentives to creativity. In this digital age one is able to efficiently and easily record a program using a VCR without the knowledge of the copyright owner.

In addition, even if the owner is made aware it will be very expensive for the owner to try protecting his/her work against all existing program recorders. These actions have therefore raised concerns from copyright owners on the dangers of making copies of their contents without their formal consent hence violating the rights of copyright owners whereby they are the only ones legally allowed to make copies of their works. However as Lewis Hyde acknowledges this could result in the violation of consumer rights where they are not allowed to make copy of the content they have legally purchased.

The strong craving of limiting the use of contents by consumers has raised intense debates on the legalities of the actions of the copyright owners to put such absurd jurisdictions on the use of contents that have been legally acquired by consumers. Hyde gives an example of the e-book adaptation of Alice in Wonderland which contains the ominous warning that it cannot be read aloud. He terms this rules as ridiculous and unrealistic rules that have been put forward by copyright owners with the intent of protecting their work hence the need of understanding that some copyright laws that had been enacted in an era when digital technology was not in existence have now become outdated and need to be abolished.

He proposes the adoption of strategies that embrace the existence of digital technology but at the same time promote fair use and profitability. Previous technological innovations such as photocopying machines and VCRs raised debates on protection of intellectual property therefore necessitating for mechanisms that could ensure a balance between consumers and copyright owners. Today the use of digital technology has evoked intense debates among many copyright owners claiming that their intellectual property rights have been deprived hence discouraging them from creating more works.

Critics have responded by arguing that copyright law as well as patent law has effectively been marred and has seemed to favour copyright owners. Apparently, the digital technologies have changed the very nature of intellectual property to its very core to such an extent that we need to totally lessen intellectual property rules. These critics are of the view that any data that is transmitted in digital or electronic formats should not solely be controlled by copyright owners because they are concerned that the technologies employed for copy protection can easily overstep their boundaries more than current legal protections and lead to the collapse of fair use rights that most people around the world now expect.

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