Volume 11 Issue 2

Intellectual Property in the digital age: Does the Napster experience point the way forward, or simply add to the confusion?

ARTHUR HOYLE

The ease with which digitally stored information can be precisely duplicated has meant that the traditional methods of protection from, and even detection of, unauthorised dealing with the property of others, have proven ineffective.

The ‘Napster experience’ has resulted in a very different view being taken by both sides of the issue of freedom to copy what is published on the internet - those who wish to preserve their economic interests through application of the traditional Intellectual Property (IP) law and who have resorted to the courts for the full range of redress; and those who seek to subvert those interests from a political, economic or anarchic view have sought to do so by exploiting the unsuitability of the present IP law, and copying almost at will.

The result, and this is as unprecedented as the very issue before the courts, has been that, far from seeing one side victorious (and the law then decided in a relatively straightforward manner), the two sides have in fact each given ground, and a new digital paradigm has emerged. This has arguably left the fundamental issues unresolved, and in doing so has not only sowed the seeds of more discontent amongst all parties involved, but has exposed the traditional owners of music copyrights (and which are seldom the creators themselves) to unprecedented attacks by those creators (be they the songwriters or the performers themselves), and their fans.

The emerging issue is that of whether the attempt to utilise the full range of IP law protection represented by the Napster action has failed, and whether in doing so, this has necessitated a thorough re-thinking of the whole issue, with the very real possibility that this will usher in a new and fundamentally different paradigm – one in which economic pragmatism overrides the exercise of legitimate legal IP rights.