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Copyright and Cyberspace

Intro

In a fast growing society there will always be obstacles in controlling and maintaining those who reside in a society. Over the past years, burdens of a society had gotten heavier due to the convergence of technology and digital age. With the creation of Internet, it allows people to freely and unlimitedly become accessible to information and entertainment. Nonetheless, the issues surrounding Copyright has arise and cause concerns for artists, authors and publishers. With the use of Internet, many people take advantage of free or counterfeit products in resulting authors and publishers with countless profit loss and violation of intellectual property. This paper discusses the history of Copyright, the infringement of Copyright and challenges that Copyright face in the digital age.

History of Copyright and Copyright in Cyberspace

Copyright exists to protect ownership rights for many authors, artists, inventors or creators. Currently, Copyright guards a wide range of work including maps, paintings, dramatic works, sounds recording, motion pictures and computer programs. Before the existence of technologies and software, we used to live in a society where the only main medium was written materials such as books and scripts. Copyright was already established during that period of time to protect authors' rights. The first known dispute of Copyright was in 560 A.D. in Ireland between Saint Columba and Saint Finnian where Saint Columba copied the Latin Psalter owned by Finnian without his consent. Even though Copyright existed in the earlier period but it was govern from a monopoly perspective. For instance, in1559, only printers in England who were members of and licensed by the Stationers could print books and all the books was registered with the Stationers. In 1577, many writers and scholars began to raise their voices against monopolistic and exclusive right in printing. This is because writers and scholars wanted to prevent the need for a license in order to print. Later on in 1624, the Parliament enacted the Statues of Monopolies and abolished most monopolies in England but some bans still existed. After a long period of fighting and petitioning, The Statute of Anne was passed in 1710. This was the first modern Copyright law that focused on protecting the authorŐs rights. Authors no longer required gaining exclusive right or license in order to print, instead they were required to register their works with the Stationers in order to be protected under the law. And by registering, authors had exclusive rights of their works and were protected by the Stationers for a term of fourteen years. Under the Statue of Anne, if an author was still alive after the fourteen years term, he or she will able to receive another term for another fourteen years (History of Copyright). In 1790, the first Copyright act was passed down by the congress of the United States constitution. The 1790 Copyright act was modeled basing on the Statue of Anne, which grant authors with rights to print and reprint their work for a period of fourteen years and to renew for another fourteen years. In the 1790 Copyright act, the congress gives the author monopoly to their work. But in order to create more incentives for others to establish new works, this monopoly right was only limited to certain authors. In order to give authors equal rights comparing to rest of the world, the 1790 Copyright act was revised in 1831. The 1831 Copyright act extends the protection period of an author to period of twenty-eight years with a possible of additional fourteen years. Due to the differencing in the Copyright act of one country comparing to another, especially between United States and Europeans countries, resulted in the formation of the international Copyright bill. Due to creation of international Copyright bill, the 1831 Copyright act was revised to complement the international Copyright bill; this leads to establishment of the 1909 Copyright act. In the 1909 Copyright act, there were news categories added under authorships and the protection term was again modified with a twenty-eight years protection term and possibly a renewal of another twenty-eight years. The major change in the Copyright act happened in 1976. This is due to the technological changes that might impact on the current Copyright act and to align Copyright in the U.S with international Copyright law. The protection period in the 1976 Copyright act is extended to fifty years and fair use was added in the act for the first time (Adler). Since majority of the population start using technologies like computer to access the Internet, it was require having an act that govern the digital side of Copyright. The Digital Millennium Copyright act (DMCA) was implemented in 1998 and contains five titles. This act prevents unauthorized access to Copyrighted material by circumventing the protection built into the work. The DMCA also make it illegal to create or make available any technology or product that can be use to circumventing the protection on Copyright materials. This act was pointed mainly at technologies such as computer, Internet, VCR and DVD player that have ability to evade the Copyright protection on digital material. Overall, the Copyright law continuously modify it self to adapt with our fast changing society (Gauntlett, and Horsley).

Copyright Infringement

Being an owner of an intellectual property allows the author to prevent others from redistributing his or her work without permission. These rights are being challenged due the rising of digital technologies and the Internet. For the past many years, there are many concerns regarding to the use of digital devices or Internet and the most controvert topic is Copyright. This problem is caused by majority of the population, particularly in the digital era, people are always seeking for routes to avoid paying for others' intellectual properties in the market. Regardless of the creators suffers; Copyrighted materials are being share over the Internet under peer-to-peer connection or illegal hosting websites. Music, software and books industries are the ones that suffer the most due to online Copyright infringement. For instance, 30 percents of the software owns by computers users in the United States are being pirated (Scott). And for the music industry, 40 billion songs were downloaded illegally using illegal sharing and file hosting websites that made music available to download. Due to increasing numbers of illegal download, authors and creators becomes less motivated to create new works or materials. Although the Internet allows us to seek for information and data that existed at no cost but we do not have any right to violate the rights of the authors or creators that own these data and information. The enormous size of cyberspace overwhelms any type of forces that are implanted to manage Copyright infringement. For example, there are tracking software that allows ISP (Internet Service Provider) to track down individuals that make illegal downloads or made illegal materials available for download (Adams). Other than the issues of illegal download in cyberspace, there are also other issues that are related to Copyright, which called deep linking and framing. Deep linking is the practice that involve hyperlinking that use links to take Internet users direct to specific location inside the website bypassing the homepage of that site. This cause potential lost on advertising revenue of the site because users can skip the front pages where all the advertisements are posted. For instance, Ticketmaster in the U.S sued Microsoft in 1997 for deep linking into Ticketmaster website from Microsoft's Seattle Sidewalks' website. Framing is also another issues that related to Copyright in cyberspace and the World Wide Web. Unlike deep linking, framing is webpage technique that frames multiple webpages in one browser window. Through framing, the content of one website is imported to another site, which violated Copyright due to one using the other's information as of their own to gain benefit. An example of framing violated Copyright term is in the case of The Washington Post and CNN sued Totalnews for framing their website on their sites. Thus, Copyright in cyberspace is the most challenging task for law enforcement in the digital age (Williams 113-119).

Producer and Publisher and liability

In the present day, Copyright laws do not only deal with printed materials but as well as new threats come from the digital age. Based on Alans William in the Copyright: Past, Present and Future state that in the world of Cyberspace and Internet, it is very difficult and impossible to force people to pay for the use of Copyrighted materials. Also, there is an exception to Copyright, which is called fair dealing that allows people to use Copyrighted materials for educational purposes without having to pay the royalties fees to the publishers or authors. Due to this exception, it becomes even more impossible for authors and publishers to place a secure protection on all the materials that they posted online. Moreover, with the existence of giant online company like Google, Yahoo, Amazon and Microsoft where Copyright works are digitalized without the consents of the owners and place it under fair use. Even though the condition under fair use is limited but digitizing the work can already affect the author or publisher. Preventing Copyright infringement always been difficult for the authority and it has been even more difficult with the existent of the Internet. Since the Internet was discovered, it has made life much easier and faster with instantaneous information exchange but at the same time it also provide opportunity for one to copy and distribute other's work without permission. Based on the US-based National Research Council, Internet is one of the world's largest libraries and also the world's largest copying machine (Williams 113-119). Even with the Digital Copyright Millennium Act (DCMA), Internet users still find their way around the law and continue obtaining Copyrighted materials. In order to prevent that, government and Copyright owner including author and publisher is turning to the Internet Service Provider (ISP). Based on the article "Internet Service Provider Liability for Subscriber Copyright Infringement, Enterprise Liability and the First Amendment" stated that there are three possible theories where Internet Service Provider is liable for their subscriber Copyright infringement. The three theory involving direct, vicarious and contributory liability and each of these theory carry different accountability that ISP must be liable for. The direct liability is simply involving ISP providing Internet access for infringement subscribers. And the vicarious liability is depending on the relationship between the ISP and the subscriber. As long as the relationship between the ISP and subscriber is remains basic Internet service provider relationship then the ISP is not liable for their subscriber's misdeeds. As for the contributory liability, the ISP is able to monitor their subscriber's activities and if any infringement activities are presented and not prevented by the ISP then the ISP will be liable in contributing to infringement activities. Thus, there are different challenges that Copyright face in the technological era (Yen 1883).

Conclusion

Overall, the establishment of Copyright act has proved that as citizens of a society we value the creation of intellectual property. The existence of the virtual world has place its marks and effects in our life as well as in the lives of authors, artists or publishers. It is very difficult for to neglect the existence of the virtual world and we must learn and find our ways to embrace it. There will always be challenges and barriers to faces and that is the reason why there are regulations exist to protect the right and punish wrongdoers.