Copyright in the Digital Age

According to dictionary.com the Digital Age, most commonly known as the Information Age, is the "period beginning about 1975 characterized by the gathering and almost instantaneous transmission of vast amounts of information and by the rise of information-based industries." In this age where sophisticated forms of communication and highly developed sources of information are predominant, we are faced with an issue that threatens the existence of copyright usage.

In cyberspace, the line defining plagiarism and piracy becomes blurred and measures to protect intellectual property become increasingly difficult with easily accessible material. While U.S. copyright law is still in effect, enforcing the law in such a high-tech age where deciding if certain material is "free" or protected is an endeavor on its own, is proving to be very difficult and ever changing. "Managing copyrights in the digital environment requires a means of following works and rights in all their permutations across the huge expanse of the Internet-from creator, to publisher or re-publisher, to distributor, to end-user; then facilitating fee collections and royalty distributions (or usage information when no fee is required) back to the rightsholder or rightsholders."(Weiner 97)

To effectively manage copyright in the digital age, Clinton's administration enacted The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (Appendix A). This act was established to update the laws of copyright to include copyright issues of the digital age.

New Technologies

In the late 1990s a series of lawsuit cases were brought before the courts against Napster, a peer-to-peer file sharing Internet service. The problem with this service is that it focused on the sharing of audio files including music that were encoded in MP3 format. This proved to be a major infringement of copyright laws on the intellectual property of music artists around the globe.

Like this there are many cases. Cases where revolutionized technological advances pose a major threat to the rights of individuals and protection of their intellectual property. With major search engines like Google and Yahoo displaying easily accessible data and photos where, with a click of a button, you can copy and paste the information and graphic to a desired location, copyright seems to be becoming obsolete. Internet sites like hulu.com and aahshare.org where you can stream tv episodes from your favorite series and download movies at high speeds, are making it increasingly difficult to manage and enforce copyright laws making them legislatures of the past.

Products like smart-phones that increase the accessibility of this material pose another challenge to copyright. With features that easily snap pictures of copyrighted content, products like Iphones, Ipads, Mac laptops, and special applications on these devices make protecting the intellectual property