Copyright in Cyberspace

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Copyright in Cyberspace

That cyberspace has had and will have a significant impact on our lives is fact. People, however, love to take this effect to the extreme, saying that cyberspace is tending more and more toward lawlessness and anarchy. Popular phrases include: “Cyberspace will render law ineffective.” “There is no way to police cyberspace.” “The government cannot penetrate cyberspace with its laws and regulations.” These are all relatively common views. Part of this trend is the belief that intellectual property cannot be protected on the Internet because of perceived inherent characteristics of cyberspace. Some even believe this to be a good thing, that there should be no barriers that hinder the flow of information, no protection over an author’s publications. I argue the contrary. Cyberspace can and will become the subject of some sort of regulatory force. We are compelled to erase anarchy from the confines of cyberspace. We are impelled to protect the laws of copyright—the laws of real space can and should be made to apply to cyberspace. We have the technology and insight to do so. Now we must begin the process of breaking the code of lawlessness and replacing it with the code of order.

The Social Value of Copyright

A copyright is a federal property right granted for original works of authorship that are fixed in a tangible medium. To qualify as original, the work must exhibit only a modicum of originality; that is, it must only be slightly original. As long as the work was not copied in its entirety from another source, it qualifies as original. The work does not have to be novel or unique or ingenious, just independently created.[1] The first copyright statute, launched in 1790,...

... middle of paper ...

...ns/jec/html…, 2.

[17] Ibid, 3.

[18] Lessig, 138-139.

[19] “Of Governance and Technology,” Inter@ctive WeekOnline, 2 October 1998.

[20] Lessig, 25.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Lessig, 6.

[23] National Research Council: Committee on Intellectual Property Rights and the Emerging Information Structure, The Digital Dilemma: Intellectual Property in the Information Age, (Washington, DC: National Academy Press 2000) 152-156.

[24] Ibid 157-161.

[25] Peter Albert, Jr and Laff, Whitesel & Saret, Ltd, 281.

[26] The Digital Dilemma, 167.

[27] Mark Stefik, “Letting Loose the Light: Igniting Commerce in Electronic Publication,” in Internet Dreams: Archetypes, Myths and Metaphors, ed and compiled by Mark Stefik (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1997) 227.

[28] Lessig, 129.

[29] Cohen, 29-33.

[30] Stefik, 243.

[31] The Digital Dilemma, 167.

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