What are Digital Copyright issues?

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What are Digital Copyright issues?

SOLUTION:

Digital Copyright:

• The decentralized nature of Internet makes it possible for any user to disseminate a work endlessly in the Cyberspace through an end number of outlets, thereby giving rise to global piracy.
• Estimates of global losses from pirated books, music and entertainment software range into billions of dollars.
• The Internet in a way presents a troublesome situation for copyright holders as the users become mass disseminators of others copyright material and creates disequilibrium between the authors and users.
• The advent of digital technology, therefore presents legislators with a choice: either expand or modify existing 'old media notions' or redefine the catalogue of restricted acts.

Digital Copyright Issues:

Taking into account the peculiarities of the new environment, multiple aspects of issues are discussed as given below.

The Right Of Reproduction (Web Casting): 

• The Reproduction Right has been at the heart of Copyright Law for more than three hundred years.
• Due to the lack of Agreement on the Right's Scope and Content, it did not include any provision that expressly protected the Reproduction Right.
• The advent of the Internet makes the delimitation of the Reproduction Right more Problematic in the Digital Age.
• Given that any transmission of protected works over the Internet involves the reproductions transitorily stored in the connected computers' RAM.

The Right Of Communication To The Public (Database Protection):

• Digital Technology blurs the line between different categories of Copyrightable works and the means of communication to the public as well.
• On the other hand, in the midst of fast development in Digital Technology, the Computer Networks, in particular the Internet, brings forth a Point-To-Point way of transmitting works on an on-demand and Interactive Basis.
• The interactivity and individuality afforded by this new method of exploiting works, makes it possible for any member of the public to have the full discretion in determining the place and the time one is intended to access and use works in digital form.

Legal Protection of Technological Measures (Source Of Protection):

• In Response to the increasing ease of reproduction and disseminating works over the internet, copyright owners and their technology have designed entirely novel and more effective technological measures, to constrain physical access to and use of their copyrighted works.
• The North America Free Trade Agreement, 1992 provides for Criminal and Civil Remedies against decoding the encrypted program carrying satellite signals and related acts.

Legal Protection of Rights Management Information (ISP Liabilities):

• It is important that whenever a work or an object of related rights is requested and transmitted over the network, the fact of the use is registered together with all the information necessary to ensure that the agreed payment can be transferred to the appropriate right owner(s).
• Various Technologies in this respect are available or being developed which will enable the necessary feedback to the right owners.
• It is crucial, however, that such information is not removed or distorted, because the remuneration of the right owners would in that case not be paid at all, or it would be diverted.

Limitations and Exceptions (Rights Of Performance):

• From earliest times in the history of copyright, it has been recognized that in certain cases limitations or exceptions should be placed on the exercise or scope of established rights and may be termed as "Internal Restrictions".
• The reasons given for imposing such restrictions may be based on considerations of Public Interest, prevention of Monopoly Control, etc.
• The limitations on copyright are necessary to keep the balance between two conflicting Public Interests: the public interest in rewarding creators and the public interest in the widest dissemination of their works, which is also the interest of the users of such works.

Copyright Enforcement In Digital Environment (Linking):

• Global Computer-Based Communications cut across Territorial Borders, creating a new empire of human activity and undermining the feasibility and legitimacy of laws based on geographical boundaries.
• Digital Technology has made Copyright Enforcement difficult to achieve.
• In the Online Environment, works such as Videos, Recordings of Musical Performances, and texts can be posted anywhere in the world, retrieved from Databases in Foreign Countries, or made available by Online Service Providers to subscribers located throughout the globe.
• Our System of International Copyright Protection, however, historically has been based on the application of National Copyright Laws with Strict Territorial Effects and on the Application of Choice-Of-Law rules to determine which country's copyright laws would apply.