9.
Digital Objects, Copyright, Intellectual Property
Copyright is a complex issue when it comes to digital technology. Traditionally, copyright laws has been based on works in their physical form whilst on the internet information flows without a physical body. Copyright grants exclusive rights to the creator of a work such as the right to authorise the duplication and the dissemination of a work to the public. Dobie (2000) quoted the U.S supreme court in defining copyright “It [copyright law] is the means by which copyright advances the progress of Science and Art.” (p. 210). An exception to the copyright law that exist both on and offline is the free use doctrine which allows works to be used for the purposes of education, news reporting and reviewing without the need of gaining permission from the owner.
Many challenges can be found in developing a system of copyright protection online. The first challenge lies in the fact of there being no physical form to online works and artists relied on this to control any unlawful copying of their works. Enforcement of copyright is another challenge as internet pirates are virtually impossible to find and the internet gives the opportunity for words to be illegally copied and distributed. Olsen (2000) affirms “This [Copyright piracy] is the digital dilemma according to the US based National Research Council (2000) because the internet is at once one of the world’s largest libraries and surely the world’s largest copying machine.” (p. 197). Decryption software programs present another challenge as this allows pirates to get around the code and make multiple high quality copies they can then distribute in cyberspace. Other challenges and cases lies in hyperlinking, deep linking and framing. Hyperlinking is the bridge on the internet that links a user from one site to another without needing permission whilst deep linking does the same thing yet skips into an inside page of the website rather than taking a user to the homepage where one see the authors name etc. Framing reveals a independent scrollable window to a separate webpage where content can be imported from one website to another. This proves a challenge to the copyright as it messes with distribution privileges and derivative works that can be passed off as a person’s own work.
Legislation that currently exists in New Zealand in relation to digital media copyright is the Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Bill 2008. Prior to this bill was the Digital Technology and the Copyright act 1994. The act renews and refines copyright and new technologies and provides a guide and balance between protection of the owner and user, as was already established in the 1994 act. Some of the key provisions of the bill defined by Tizard (2008), the associate commerce minister, are: “Two key conditions to the format shifting exception is that the original purchaser must not make more than one copy for use on each device owned and the purchaser must retain both the original version of the sound recording purchased and the copy made. This provision does not legitimize copying of CDs for friends or online file-sharing, both these actions remain an infringement of copyright.”
References
Dobie, I. (2000). The Music Industry Versus the Internet: MP3 and Other Cyber Music Wars. Web Studies. (2nd ed.). (Gauntlett, D., & Horsley, R. Ed.). New York: Oxford Univeristy Press.
Olson, K. K. (2000). Copyright in Cyberspace: Protecting Intellectual Property Online. Web Studies. (2nd ed.). (Gauntlett, D., & Horsley, R. Ed.). New York: Oxford Univeristy Press.
Tizard, J. H. (2008). Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Bill Passes 3rd Reading – Media Statement. Ministry of Economic Development. Retrieved November 2, 2009, from http://www.med.govt.nz/templates/MultipageDocumentTOC____35264.aspx
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