Regulation Problems
The Berne Convention;
Since long ago Intellectuals believed that people should control their creations and inventions, since they are the creators of those properties. In the year 1787 America included her support for copyright in the constitution in, Article 1; Section 8, Clause 8” Which states that, “congress has the mandate to promote the science and useful arts by securing author’s and Inventor’s exclusive rights to their writings and discoveries for a limited period of time”( SPINELLO,2009,pg 31). By that time countries such as Germany, France and Britain had already began copyrighting properties for their citizens.
The Berne Convention was held in Switzerland in 1886 whereby an international copyright treaty was established. The treaty entailed the facts that; a copyrights will be treated equally by all the Berne treaty member countries, Every form of work/creation has a right to copyright protection, The owner has exclusive rights to his/her intellectual property/invention and any copying, translation, broadcasting or performance should be done with permission from the property’s owner, The protection of the owners works continues until 50 years after the owners death. The release of anonymous work is protected for 50 years after the work is released to the public. Hence, the Berne Treaty was helpful since, one could make an invention in his/her home country copyright it, and the same invention would be protected in a foreign country that is a member of the Berne Treaty and this encouraged creativity through the control of unfair copying of people’s ideas. The downside to the Berne Treaty at that time was that for a work to be copyright protected it had to be legal from the country of origin and this Treaty only applied to the developed countries only thereby excluding developing third world countries such as countries Africa.
The Digital Age
Later in the years United Nations Educational, Scientific and cultural Organization, UNESCO held a copyright convention, forced the member countries of the UN to comply with the work protection rules found in the Berne Convention. In 1967 World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO was formed which also promotes the protection of intellectual property and the protection of ideas as well as incorporating most of the ideas in the Berne treaty.
Intellectual property rights are for intangible products, as opposed to tangible property which can be owned by only one person at a time. During 19th century when copyrighting began, the control of the intellectual properties was much easier since the machinery for reproduction was very expensive. An example is whereby, for one to reproduce writings, one had to do this through a printing press. Therefore, The Berne Treaty was effective at that time.
In the current digital age Intellectual properties are hard to control once they are with the client, since that the client can share it and copy it to others at will. Advancement in technology like a double edged sword has made production of books music movies and graphic games to be produced in high quality, and at a lower cost for mass production as compared to the past on the other hand, the technology has made it cheap and fast to copy all kinds of intellectual works through, printing, copy pasting, writing to media such as compact discs and sharing over the internet.
The digital age has presented new opportunities and new challenges, the digital age in combination with the internet has made it the mass production of intellectual properties faster than in the past, high quality production of intellectual properties such as movies, music and graphic games. The internet has made marketing of intellectual properties faster and not limited by geographical area.
Making limited copies of intellectual property would seem the logic thing to do in order to try and control intellectual property rights violation but limiting copies is economically inefficient since it will be very expensive to produce small quantities of a product. As the economies of scale dictates, it is cheaper to produce a product in large scale in order to reduce the cost of production. Hence, the production of intellectual rights in small quantities is not a feasible option for intellectual property control.
Intellectual Property Rights
There are two ways in which to protect creative works, one is through copyrighting and the other is patenting. Copyrighting has been reserved for creative works such art, music and literature. A Copyright work is internationally protected. A copyright is created immediately one creates something. Copyrighting encourages little creativity, since it does not look at the lack of obviousness in an idea. A Copyright has no limit of time period validity. On the other hand a Patent Needs application with a patent office, after which the creative work, is viewed by experts who look for features such as Novelty and lack of non obviousness. Patents are not international therefore one has to apply for patents in all countries where one would like the intellectual property protected. Patents last for 20 years from filing. Through the search for lack of obviousness, Patenting encourages creativity.
There is relevance expiration of intellectual Property Rights so as to allow the advancement of that property/idea by scientists and researchers in future. An example is whereby Albert Einstein did not copy right his Relativity Theory and it is used in learning institutions and Global positioning systems just to mention a few.
Opportunities and Challenges of the Digital Age
The digitizing of Intellectual properties such as movies, Music, books, and graphic games has made the quality of production high and also the marketing of these products faster, easier, with lower cost, and geographically unlimited when combined with internet usage. The internet has been very competitive hence websites are looking for online traffic so that this traffic can be converted to money, through affiliate programs, revenue from advertisement clicking, advertisements, and also online sales of products and services. The high level of competitiveness has led to various website owners to include free items and information on their websites or links to such websites with the view that they will get large traffic which may lead to increased income, an example is the Content-Traffic-Priority-Monetize formula offered by Sitesell (buildit.sitesell.com). Many website do tap the internet traffic without infringing copyright laws, but some websites will infringe copyright laws by offering free downloads on copyright materials such as music, movies and e-books. Other copyright infringing websites will sell copyright materials at a lower value than they cost. The Internet also led to the rise of peer-to-peer networks whereby, various internet users can exchange copyright materials the dangers of peer-to peer connections are illustrated in the FBI website as Child exploitation and obscenity, copyright infringement, and computer hacking (www.fbi.gov). The unethical practice of sharing copyright materials leads to drop in sales of the intellectual properties, which in turn reduces or denies income to the intellectual property owner. In 2001 the Napster Corporation was sued by various recording companies since its file sharing services were used by clients to illegally share copyright materials. Napster Corporation was found guilty and was closed down (cyber.law.harvard.edu). On the Other hand a company like Google has made a commendable effort in its Google Books feature whereby they have taken many books from various libraries and put the online for the perusal of internet users. Google Books only shows limited parts of the book although the authors can instruct that the snippets of their books should not be shown. This service by Google Corporation does not infringe in writer’s copyright since they list books with the book authors consent. The Google Books service has made convenient for internet users to do book research in order to choose the most relevant book to buy and also the promotion of online book purchase through the Amazon website. Copyright infringement will lead to lack of or reduced creativity In the long run since inventors or artistes will not be willing to have their talents negatively exploited. The way of using copyright material without the owner’s consent, is through “fair use”, but many factors are considered such as the nature of copyright work, the purpose of use (whether for profit or non-profit), the portion/size of the copyright work to be used and the financial effect on the copyright owner after use. Hence, fair use is valid if there is no financial damage on the copyright owner.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA)
In 1998 America adopted Digital Millennium Copyright Act in a bid to fight copyright infringement, by implementing two treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The rules Prohibits circumventing technological measures used for accessing protected works such as using other un-authorized means to access a password protected website such as hacking, the trafficking of gadgets that help people circumventing access controls or copy controls and Space Shifting which entails moving property from one medium to another is also prohibited an example is copying a movie from a Compact Disc to a computer, Computer repairers can make a limited number of software temporary copies when repairing a computer (WOLF, 2003, pg1 – pg4).
Conclusion
The arrival of the digital age has come with it numerous opportunities and numerous challenges. Intellectual Properties such as Movies, Music, graphic games and e-books can be produced faster, cost efficiently, of high quality and be dispatched to any part of the world via the internet. Technological advancement has also led to the rise of various vices such as the ease of sharing copyright materials through copying to compact discs and flash discs, printing and photocopying copyright written material and online file exchange, all these methods of copyright infringement impact negatively on the intellectual property owner and hence, reducing or discouraging creativity in the long run. Malpractices such as peer- to-peer sharing exposes internet users to further risks such as the computer getting hacked, copyright infringement and Child exploitation and obscenity.
The offer of free things and information over the internet can legally bring income using a formula such SiteSell’s CTPM, Affiliate income, acting as an affiliate to other companies products and services, Hosting click advertisements such as Google per click program(Randy, homebusiness.about.com), Advertising and legal selling of goods and services online. Hence the offer of free things is a way to capture online traffic so that this traffic can be converted to money later. Google Corporation has the Google books services whereby it gives internet users the freedom to preview and buy many copyright books without infringing Copyright laws.
Various practices have been employed in order to curb copyright infringement such as the America adopted Digital Millennium Copyright Act which prohibits illegal copying of copyright material, Circumnavigation which includes hacking and the production and supply of Circumnavigation technologies. Production companies and individual have also sued individuals and corporations that infringe on their copyright materials. In 2001 the Napster Corporation was sued by various recording companies since its file sharing services were used by clients to illegally share copyright materials, Napster was found guilty and this led to its closure. Some Production companies have also enforced copy controls that inhibit the copying of copyright materials. The use of access controls such as passwords is another way protecting copyright Intellectual property.
SPINELLO, R. A. (2009). A defense of intellectual property rights. Cheltenham, UK, Edward Elgar. http://www.ebscohost.com.
WOLF, C. (2003). The Digital Millennium Copyright Act: text, history, and caselaw. Silver Spring, Md, Pike & Fischer.
FBI [ONLINE] Available at: <http://www.fbi.gov/scams-safety/peertopeer> [Accessed 29 March 2012]
Harvard [ONLINE] Available at: <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/~wseltzer/summary.html> [ Accessed 29 March 2012]
SiteSell [ONLINE] Available at: <http://buildit.sitesell.com/start-ctp.html> [ Accessed 29 March 2012]
Randy Duermyer [ONLINE] Available at: <http://homebusiness.about.com/od/internetmarketing/a/pay_per_click.htm> [ Accessed 30 March 2012]
