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How has the onset of the electronic age affected Intellectual Property?
Home » Entrepreneurship » Intellectual Property » How has the onset of the electronic age affected Intellectual Property?The electronic age has seen an increase in the attempt to use software-based digital rights management tools to restrict the copying and use of digitally based works. This can have the effect of limiting fair use provisions of copyright law and even make the first-sale concept uncertain. In essence this would allow the creation of a book which would disintegrate after one reading. As individuals have proven skilled at bypassing such measures in the past, many copyright holders have also successfully lobbied for laws such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which uses criminal law to prevent any bypassing of software used to enforce digital rights management systems. Corresponding tools to prevent the sidestepping of copyright protection have existed for some time, and are being expanded.
The information infrastructure has the potential to destroy careful balancing of public good and private interest that has emerged from the evolution of U.S. intellectual property law over the past 200 years. Changes driven by rapid innovation amount to a leap that could force us to rethink many of the fundamental premises and practices.
Opinions run strong on issues of digital intellectual property. If we are seeing an economic shift as significant as the industrial revolution, then intellectual property may well be the most important asset in the coming decades. The decisions we make now will determine who will benefit from the technology and who will have access to what information and on what terms.
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