Introduction
Historically, intellectual property rights, IPR, have played a pivotal role in safeguarding all types of creators in business, scientific and artistic fields. In media technologies, besides providing effective mechanism of protection, the IPR has provided ethical means in which the creators or inventors can appreciate their efforts.
Although recent years have witnessed a proliferation of creativity and knowledge exceeding the precincts of mainstream protective measures, IPR has continued to evolve, in tandem with these happenings.
Media technologies have witnessed more challenges. These challenges have spanned all spectrums of the society. They include ethical, technological, political, and legislative spectrums, among others. Despite these issues hampering the process of achieving their success, they have granted opportunities for various stakeholders involved in devising methods which fix their effective utilisation.
Hence, in recent years, laws, policies and technologies among other strategies, have been constituted to control how media technologies can be used without compromising the intellectual property rights.
The author describes how the control of intellectual property rights has contributed to the development of media technologies. In achieving this objective, the author notes that various strategies implemented focusing on intellectual property rights have been pivotal in controlling how media technologies are produced, distributed and used.
Measures, such as legislations and technology among others, have provided an elaborate framework in using media technologies. Besides, various laws have been enforced to control or protect intellectual property. Further, the author demonstrates using Napster and Sony Vs Universal Studios as case studies to demonstrate issues that have resulted by not embracing the role of intellectual property rights.
Discussion
For several years, legal controls have been used to safeguard the society against threats which can occur unexpectedly. Legal controls have provided an effective mechanism in addressing the issue of intellectual property rights. Presently, the world has become a global village; the dawn of the internet has resulted in what we call digital revolution.
In the media industry, digital revolution has created what is known as new digital media; hence, digital media has become a common phrase widely embraced in technology and media industries. It is a technology which is enabled by the internet. New digital media has imposed a challenge to conventional copyright policy.
Thus, many organisations owning copyrights argue that the digital media have simplified prospects for intellectual theft. Intellectual Property Online (53) illustrates that new media have provided new challenges in terms of intellectual property rights. Intellectual Property Online notes that devising higher protection standards than was with earlier terms of copyright law will help to neutralise loss of revenues (57).
Legal Control Measures and Controls
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the European Union Copyright Directive
Despite the differences, Digital Millennium Copyright Act, DMCA and the European Union Copyright Act, EUCA, have balanced the opposing differences in protecting digital media. The acts own a similar purpose of fixing a secure environment for relaying digital media contents (Intellectual Property Online 58).
The Acts contain terms making it unlawful to circumvent copy-protection technologies in order to access unauthorised content. The acts also provide protection to other illegal activities such as distribution, production and making content available with intent of encouraging circumvention. Intellectual property owners are concerned about the illegal appropriation of contents as it restricts them from profiting from their efforts.
The DMCA and EUCD with an aim of disciplining unlawful appropriation outlined specific rules to incorporate technology protecting copyright work and granting honest users to fulfill their rights (Lucchi). The anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA prevents three types of misdeeds. According to Digital Rights Management, it outlaws evading technological measures that prevent access to copyrighted work (104). Secondly, it forbids trafficking in devices that can improve circumvented access controls.
Lastly, it restricts trafficking in circumvention devices for technological measures that safeguard the copyright, ownerâs exclusive rights such as copying and distribution. On the other hand, EUCD promotes three areas in its strategy. These areas are the distribution rights, reproduction rights and the rights of communication (Lucchi).
The Act also seeks member countries to provide legal procedures to guard against circumvention for technological measures that cover works. It criminalises circumvention in any approach regardless of the rights it protects (Digital Rights Management 106). The two laws, presently in force, provide content owners with a stronger opportunity to implement their own regulations and limits on the use and access of digital content.
Intellectual Property Enforcement
New European Pattern
To ensure secure digital media content and guarantee strong individual userâs deeds, the EU enforced the intellectual property rights as a regulation that compels member countries to generate decisive, reasonable, proportionate procedures, and remedies against copying and piracy.
Davis explains that these measures were aimed at providing absolute protection to copyright violations (78). The European Union asserted that enforcing the law was necessary because without a careful and effective security, creativity and innovation was deemed to die. This regulation compels that it is necessary to ensure the substantive law on intellectual property is administered properly across the society.
This is because administering is a key objective for success for protecting intellectual property. The European Union notes that a rapid increase in piracy and intellectual property rights and violation of intellectual property is a phenomenon which has a global outlook. When left unchecked, it poses a dire threat to society. Hence, the enforcement measures and other procedures are essential to defeat the challenge.
Copyright Legislations
Many conventional and envisaged applications embracing digital media focus on transferring, recording or finding contents instead of transforming contents to new ones. For instance, applications that would have easily recombined personal media with elements from other public and other mass media, offer new areas in which copyright law and policy succeed (Lucchi). Most copyright regulations have shifted towards giving greater security and universal rights to copyright owners.
According to Litman (2000), this illustrates a shift from the conventional pattern of prohibition by the acceptable use of copyrighted materials to all unauthorised use as illegal. Besides, older protection that was envisaged under the US copyright laws, for instance, is facing a threat with the shift to the digital domain. This, according to Stallman (2004), has led to the role of copyright entirely reversed.
The digital technology has transformed it into a system that allows producers to confine the public into appreciating the works of authors. In the digital communication layout, there are typically developments which have dramatically changed the course of accessing copyrighted information. According to Davis, these developments are zero marginal cost of copying, negligible cost of posting or producing
new information on the internet and zero cost of transmission over the internet (80). With zero costs for duplication of information, the cyberspace technologies feel threatened. Therefore, there is a need to restrict ââtheftâ, by embracing new technological advancement that encourage fair useâ principle, a fundamental aspect of copyright principle (Davis 83).
Fair Use
The intellectual property rights, IPR, have simplified the manner in which the society engages in the proper use and access of copyrighted content. This has been achieved through a concept known as fair use. In the United States, the Fair Use Doctrine encourages acceptable use of copyrighted materials without permission or license, for purposes such as news reporting, comments and teaching, among others. The statute has extended fair use in various ways (Borland).
This includes time-shifting, in using a VCR to time-shift when a person is viewing television programs and format shifting as in creating an MP3 format version of an audio CD that a person already owns. Assessing when to use of copyrighted content under fair use has been analysed by the courts on a case by case basis.
This has been done using the four codes. These codes include the intent and spirit of the use (whether for nonprofit aims or commercial), the amount and substantiality of the potion used for the copyrighted work and impact of use on the potential market. These codes are covered under the United States Code (Dittmann 7).
However, fixing fair use has been a difficult task because of the contradictory interpretations set forth by legal scholars. The distinction of rationalisation hinges on whether fair use is a confirmatory right that permits copying in specific conditions or just a defense used in cases of copyright violation (Dittmann 6).
When understood along the confirmatory right attitude, fair use is an essential part of copyright law that safeguards the constitutionally guaranteed rights of an individualâs free expression and free speech. On the contrary, when fair use is understood along the defensive line, copyright creators and technologies that enable them can limit a person access to digital media; granting fair use no longer an alternative available to the wider society. Copyright creators would then control access and use of digital media.
Technology Control Measures
The rapid technological progress in information and communication has fixed new legislative and judicial effort to restructure intellectual property rights in the digital media. This is to fix equilibrium between consumers and the legal owners. Hence, in todayâs information society, technology control is directed by various international conventions and compliance with the state legislative practices. Technology control
legislation then supports enforceability. Acts such as EUCD and DMCA recognise a legal status and offer a candid constitutional protection for copyright management and technological measures preventing unauthorised use and determining the conditions for permitted use (Lucchi).
According to Borland, technology provides no issue to any legal control. It oversees transactions on an authoritative manner (Borland). Because of these characteristics of technology, intellectual property laws have undergone various amendments to support the needs of the technological world.
The role of technology in safeguarding intellectual property has been varied. One of the roles it achieves is preventing users from gaining access or engaging in practices such as copying. It also allows creation of licensing business models.
These models permit holders to have the right of choosing their own discretion terms and conditions for use and access to their work. They also set in technical devices used in accomplishing their tasks. In absolute terms, technology cultivates the authority or grants the rights holder privileges to determine how his/her work should be used.
Borland explains that different technological expressions have been expanding to keep contents from unauthorised copyright infringement and ease overseeing the use of media by the society (Borland).
Terms such as technological protection measures, self-help systems, automated rights and digital rights management systems are springing as a result. These expressions point to an automated architecture that can manage and protect distributing digital works. Besides, these measures provide easy transfer of digital works from inventors and publishers to consumers.
Technological features to Protect access rights and control
The inclusion of copy protection devices has been an element of various digital media. Several methods have been employed to ensure reasonable access to contents is guaranteed (Stenger). These measures are grouped into rights control and access control. Rights control limits a userâs capacity to engage the rights of the content owner.
Access control involves a concept of access privileges to succeed a given operation. Access controls have granted legal protection than conventional controls. The rights holders are guaranteed more incentives of use than rights controls to improve stronger legal protection against circumvention.
Transformative Technology
Digital media technology has fixed significant changes in sharing and producing information. These changes have had a sweeping effect on copyright law and policies. Dittmann illustrates in his journal, IEEE Multi-Media: âThis has had a deeper impact on digital media, that media can easily be expressed in the form or meaningâ (5).
While he noted this transformative characteristic of digital media as a risk to technological and copyright defense actions, it is the transformative environment of the digital media that most promises protection of fair use rights (Stenger).
Media technologists are involved in inventing new ways. These ways make the present and future digital media support intellectual property laws and policies that promote freedom of expressions and fair use privilege.
Hence, the media technologies will strive to safeguard users and not primarily the data stored in it. According to Stenger, technologies strengthen and support transformative elements of digital media by making them available, reusable and accessible through establishing and using metadata (Stenger).
Evolving technology
Current trends in information technology have provided new alternatives in safeguarding intellectual property rights. Though some have proved successful, others have contributed to more infringement opportunities. Initiatives to establish barriers, for example, the Secure Digital Music Initiative, SDMI, have emphatically failed. Similarly, other efforts such as the Macrovisionâs âsnaps and cracklesâ technology have also failed.
Borland, in his article âSnaps, Crackles May Stop CD Piracyâ, illustrates that âsnaps and cracklesâ technology inserts bits in a PCM encoded music on a CD (Borland). When such a CD is compressed with an MP3 algorithm and preserved with the data file on a computer system, the music gets corrupted with audible crackles and snaps on playback (Borland). These industry actions, although viewed as a big achievement, do not guarantee security of content. They are short-term remedies.
Case Studies
The Napster – Illegal File Swapping
Illegal file swapping draws a common global threat to intellectual property rights enforcement. File swapping involves having a file sharing software or peer distribution system. The service allows users to freely exchange or share music files or other copyrighted content on the internet.
Because these files are protected from copyright, less legitimacy has been attached to MP3 file size. McCourt and Patrick illustrate that Napster, which was founded in 1999, was a well-known online business which embraced peer-to peer network in heightening illegal file sharing practice (335).
The Napster example illustrates the effect of intellectual property rights issue in the new digital world. Napster was an online music business which provided music sharing services. According to McCourt and Patrick, Napster operated on the idea that when someone pays for a given song or album, he had a right to âshareâ with others (336).
During the pre-internet days, sharing convention was widely embraced, because any person would give a friend a book or a video cassette without minding copyright infringement. It is well noted that non-commercial consumer copying is a fair use under the copyright regulation. However, in the digital age, things have changed because of the unlimited number of copies which can be made. Napster music sharing succeeded three distinct phases.
The first phase was a user browsed the Napster website and entered the music of choice using his/her personal computer. The userâs machine then searched similar machines on the internet running a similar program. Once the search was over and the music found, the user then selects the device and transfers the MP3 music file containing the music.
The Napster peer-to-peer technology allowed online connected computers to connect without passing, by means of a central file server (McCourt and Patrick, 342). This established a system that constituted internetworked computers with share files stored in a single computer and controlled by simple share software.
Napster had to face many legal issues because of its service of free music sharing. This was because it was violating the copyright rules of the owners of the music. After lengthy and protracted legal battles involving intellectual property infringement, Napster had to submit and presently, the e-business offers subscription services. It pays royalties on copyrighted contents.
Although Napster story has cooled, many other e-based organisations have taken the Napster theory and enhanced it. According to Stenger, among the ideas evolving after Napster collapsed is that some e-based businesses have created offshore Napster sites. These sites blend two lengthy issues of the legal jurisdiction of the internet and the intellectual property rights (Stenger).
Stenger, in his article âEntrepreneur Proposes Offshore Napster Cloneâ, notes the companies which compete with the Napster ideas use the pig Latin, or other unique misspelling to obscure music filenames blocked by Napster (Stenger).
Napster case shows the challenge that most mainstream music industry businesses have in this internet era. Thus, these issues are anchored on assumptions of technological obstacles that no longer prevail.
Despite the courts neutralising the Napster case, the challenge of music sharing is common; undoubtedly, the future will encounter many problems. Perhaps, possibilities of music intellectual property rights will move away from the ownership model to licensing model. However, whether the strategy will reduce music piracy is still under discussion.
Sony Vs Universal Studios 1984
Sony and Universal Studios were some of the leading media industries in 1980âs. In 1980âs, most media industries used cassette and audio tapes to distribute, play and store music. Besides, using these media simplified copying of music, hence, people would do themselves without much difficulty.
This scenario elicited a threat to organisations producing and marketing recorded music. This was because an entire album could be recorded off the air with reasonable reliability. However, loss of music quality was causing an outcry from the listening public, besides, the copies successfully produced were poorer in precision. Besides, commercially produced cassette tapes would be borrowed and duplicated. These processes contributed to loss of royalties to the musicians.
This was a similar issue that arose between Sony and Universal Studios in 1984, when home video recorder was introduced in the recording industry. Home video recorded made it possible to record video programs such as motion pictures off the air. This signaled that royalties were not paid for subsequent viewing.
This scenario prompted a significant legal battle, pitting producers of blank tape and tape recording devices against content producers. This resulted in a court case between the two media industries. The results of the conflict were that consumers could lawfully record content off the air for personal use, they could also sell. However, whereas commercial practice of using such materials was prohibited, home use was not.
Conclusion
Various technological barriers and legal sanctions have contributed to redefining how media technologies are used in contemporary world. Hence, they will continue to be vital in protecting intellectual property rights. This has been successful, especially in preventing corporate piracy. Hence, at a personal level, they will not be sufficient because the technological barrier has decreased and is unlikely to increase by strategies such as encryption methods incorporated in volumes of produced items.
Legal interventions such as Digital Millennium Act and European Union among others, have streamlined media technologiesâ use by providing effective guidelines. Hence, with more technologies emerging, these interventions will endeavour to evolve to address the intricacies that come with new technologies.
Work Cited
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