Explain three challenges of implementing copyrights for digital
products on the internet.
Model answer
Challenges of implementing copyrights for digital products
on the internet
1. Increased Use of Information in Digital Form:
Presenting information in digital form, as opposed to the
more traditional analogue form, means using numbers to
capture and convey the information. Music offers a clear
example of the difference between the two. Capturing
musical sounds requires describing the shape of the
vibrations in air that are the sound. Records capture that
information in the shape of the groove in the vinyl.
Compact discs (CDs), by contrast, capture the same
information as a large collection of numbers. Digital
information has a remarkable breadth of descriptive ability,
including text, audio, video, software, and even shape (e.g.
in computer-aided design).
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2. Access is by Copying: When information is represented
digitally, access inevitably means making a copy, even if
only an ephemeral copy. This copying action is deeply
rooted in the way computers work: even an action as
simple as examining a document stored on one's own disk
means copying it, in this case twice - from the disk to the
computer‘s memory and then again onto the video display.
Before one can view a page from the World Wide Web.
the remote computer must first send one's computer a copy
of the page. That copy is kept on the hard disk, copied
again into memory, and then displayed on the screen. In
addition, intermediate copies of the page may have been
made by other computers as the page is transported over
the network from the remote computer to the requesting
computer
3. Economics, Character, and Speed of Digital
Reproduction: Digital representation changes both the
economics and the character of reproduction. Copying
digital information, even on a home computer, is easy
and inexpensive: A standard (1.44 megabyte) floppy
disk, which holds the equivalent of about 500 pages of
text, takes no more than a minute to duplicate and is
treated as if it were a piece of paper - it can be routinely
given away and carried around. A compact disc (CD),
which holds 650 megabytes (the equivalent of about
220,000 pages, or 44 cartons of paper22), can be copied in
15 minutes to another blank disk using equipment now
4. Content Liberated from Medium: Information in digital
form is largely liberated from the medium that carries it.
When information is sent across networks, there is no need
to ship a physical substrate; the information alone flows to
the recipient. The liberation of content is also evident when
bits are copied across media (disk to tape to CD to floppy)
with the greatest of ease. The choice of media may have
consequences for the amount of storage or speed of access,
but the content of the information and its properties (e.g.,
the ability to make exact copies) are preserved perfectly
across a variety of media.
5. New Kinds and Uses of Information: Digital information
is malleable, easily searched and indexed, and easily cross-
indexed. Although a paper book is difficult to alter and
hard to search even with a good index, online text can be
changed easily, for instance, by adding and rearranging
paragraphs. Coupled with digital transmission, plasticity of
information confers, along with great advantages, the
potential for fraudulent acts such as plagiarism or forgery.
6. Increasing Use of Licensing: From the early days of the
software market to the present, commercial distribution of
digital information typically has been through the use of
licenses rather than by sale. Packaged software
traditionally has had a shrink-tap license, an agreement that
purportedly goes into effect upon opening the (shrink-
wrapped) package. More recently, a wide variety of digital
information is being marketed on the Web with what are
sometimes whimsically called "click-wrap" licenses, an
agreement presented on the screen and ―agree d to‖ by the
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click of a mouse. Negotiated licenses are also used to
clarify the terms governing access to large databases.
7. Multiplicity of Access and Access at a Distance:
Information in digital form is accessible to thousands of
people virtually simultaneously, because multiple users of
a server can read the same file at their own individual pace
without interfering with each other. This attribute of course
makes digital information much more flexible than
traditional media; a single copy of a book, for example, is
not accessible to more than one or two people
simultaneously.