Copyright And New Technologies: Can They Co-exist?

Abstract

With the rising use of the Internet and the other technological advances that go with it, the continued enforcement of Copyright Law is jeopardized. Many are asking the question of whether or not we will reach a point when we can no longer compensate adequately for copyrighted endeavors. If we do reach this point, what will motivate these people to continue creating? The Internet is an independent and completely decentralized network of computers that no one entity can be held responsible for. This also means that monitoring the Internet for copyright infringement is close to impossible. With technologies such as encryption and remailers, users on the Internet can trade, sell, download, and upload illegal copies of copyrighted works with little or no detection. Although there are several options for updating the current Copyright Law to cover new problems associated with rising technologies, we have yet to discover the means by which we can enforce these changes.