Safeguarding Intellectual Property Rights in the Digital Realm
How intellectual property is created, shared, and protected in the digital age really is revolutionary. And the same technologies that have driven contemporary progress have uprooted traditional ways of securing and ensuring the rights of inventors and authors. This article delves into the significant problems now confronting copyright and patent protections in the digital era. It identifies what those problems are, why they matter, and offers a series of solutions that might bring about a semblance of order and improvement.
An Overview of the Challenges
The swift development of digital technology and the spread of online platforms have created an environment in which intellectual property rights are under unprecedented threat. This threat takes several forms. Digital piracy and copyright infringement are rampant. The unauthorized sharing of copyrighted works seems never to have been so easy or so common or to have reached so many people and places. This sharing, of course, is now global—in a way that we have never experienced before. And it happens in an intermediated fashion, with all sorts of online platforms and services serving as conduits for infringement, some of which (YouTube, for instance) seem to have infringement built into their business model. To these main threats, one could add the emergence of all kinds of new technologies.
How we create, consume, and share information in the digital age has changed entirely—transformationally. This, in turn, has provoked several new challenges and quite a few delightful opportunities for copyright and patent protection. I see at least four sobering challenges we face when it comes to copyright and patent protection in today’s digital world.
Intellectual Property Rights in the Digital Age: Challenges and Solutions
Impact on Creators and Industries
Protecting intellectual property in the digital world has effects that reach far and wide: It affects the creative and innovative incentives that are supposed to be built into our systems of law and economy, and it weakens them when it erodes our systems of legal rights. Content creators and rights holders have real financial losses; they are the ones who sustain the economy and lay the groundwork for the next stage of technological change. Their intellectual property assets have real value—usually lots of it—and my concern is that it is eroding.
Technological Solutions on the Horizon
Promising new technologies provide fresh opportunities for protecting intellectual property in the digital age.
Digital Rights Management (DRM) Systems
DRM technologies use encryption and access controls to protect digital content from being used in ways not authorized by the intellectual property rights holder. Some of their key features are:
- They limit copying, sharing, and modification of the content.
- They control whether and when the content can be accessed (time-based access).
- They monitor whether and how the content is being used.
While DRM can work well enough, overly restrictive implementations can and have impeded legitimate use, leading not just to confusion about what copyright law allows, but also to consumer pushback.
Content Recognition Algorithms
AI-powered content recognition systems can automatically detect copyrighted material across online platforms. Applications include:
- Identifying infringing uploads on social media and video sharing sites
- Enabling rights holders to monetize or remove unauthorized content
- Preventing the upload of known copyrighted works
Rights Management with Blockchain Technology
The basic premise of blockchain technology, with its immutable record-keeping capabilities, holds potential for revolutionizing many areas and processes where trust, transparency, and record-keeping are needed.
Thus, these premises were considered along with the technology’s smart contract capabilities to see how it could potentially re-engineer these processes and areas in the domain of intellectual property rights management.
Following are three major areas where blockchain revolutionizes rights management.
Legal and Policy Frameworks
Strong legal protections and remedies are necessary to safeguard online intellectual property. The structure of intellectual property rights law varies widely from country to country, and as the internet crosses all borders, international cooperation becomes ever more essential. This is not only because intellectual property rights standardization across jurisdictions is a necessary precondition for effective enforcement, but also because, if effective at all, enforcement must be carried out across borders. Certainly the internet knows no borders, but it also must, for the sake of effective intellectual property rights protection, work across borders. This is what very much seems to need a serious international conference.
Procedures for Notifying and Taking Down Infringing Content
Numerous nations have set up systems requiring online platforms to remove piratical content when they are notified of its existence to protect intellectual property rights. These systems must strike a balance between a platform taking prompt action (presumably, so as to protect itself from liability) and a platform not taking too much action in a way that could repress legitimate speech and uses. This is, of course, a very difficult balance to strike.
Finding a Balance: Fair Use and Open Access Intellectual property frameworks must achieve a delicate balance: they must protect the rights of creators and innovators, yet also allow others to build upon those works, to innovate and create new works of their own. You might think of it this way: on one side of the scale, you have the rights of the creators and innovators; on the other side, you have the rights of those who want to use the creators’ works to do their own innovating. Copyright protection is important; principles of fair use, not so much. Let me put it another way: as intellectual property rights become more and more robust, the public domain becomes more and more impoverished.
Promoting Ethical Practices and Awareness
Creating a culture where respect is shown for intellectual property rights is important if we are to achieve anything approaching the kind of long-term success that seems attainable. We pursue this culture in a number of ways:
Educational campaigns. We conduct campaigns aimed at increasing awareness among all segments of society about the true value of intellectual property rights and what can happen if you violate it. We have programs targeted just for schools and within those programs target high-risk demographics for outreach to those who might be tempted to infringe.
We also campaign in a way that’s not too heavy-handed but is nonetheless effective—we talk about the kinds of human and economic impacts that piracy has.
Some might consider these just propaganda efforts, but as someone who’s been on the receiving end of infringement and seen the damage firsthand, I can assure you these programs are worth the effort.
Creators must be able to protect and earn from their creations. The information provided below shows how we work with innovators to accomplish this. We offer them resources that empower them to safeguard and profit from their intellectual property, including: Rights registration systems that are simple and straightforward to use.
Motivating Obedience Nudging enterprises and other platforms toward responsible behavior: Gratefully thanking the smart platforms and businesses that take reasonable, responsible steps in advance of any enforcement action for putting in place common-sense, anti-piracy measures. Safe harbor protections that reward those proactive anti-piracy policies. Industry codes of conduct that state what responsible behavior looks like, and that harangue (in a positive way) those who need a nudge, or a push, toward responsible behavior.
The Road Ahead: Adapting to a Digitized World
As technology moves forward, intellectual property protection must also move forward:
Alternative Business Models New approaches to monetizing creative works:
- Subscription and streaming services
- Freemium with premium features
- Direct creator-to-consumer platforms
Using cutting-edge technology to deliver next-generation intellectual property rights protection. Innovations like artificial intelligence boost our ability to catch and stop infringers. Our new use of blockchain will help manage rights in a new era of decentralized content. Not just next generation—this is an era of time for using the technologies of tomorrow.
Cooperative efforts among stakeholders who have a shared interest in intellectual property are vital if we are to have any hope of making the digital economy a safe space for creators, platforms, and policymakers. Public-private partnerships among diverse stakeholders are, in fact, one of the most promising ways forward in this regard. Multi-stakeholder dialogues in which platform and content creators, along with diverse public and private stakeholders, work out balanced solutions to these problems are another effective setting for the kinds of conversations that need to happen.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q: What is the impact of digital piracy on the creative industry?
A: The creative industry has a large amount of lost revenue and other negative impacts associated with digital piracy. These include time-consuming efforts to pursue violators and expenses that reduce the profits of those who create and distribute movies, TV shows, and other projects. Digital pirating also has other consequences. Over time, it can erode the value of intellectual property in general. If people don’t have to pay for what they’re watching or listening to, how valuable is it, really?
Q: What are the challenges in enforcing intellectual property rights across international borders?
A: Key challenges include:
- Varied legal norms and enforcement methods across nations
- Conflicting jurisdictional claims in going after infringers that operate across borders
- Heavy reliance on the goodwill of cooperating rogue nations when pursuing would-be infringers that take refuge in foreign, and sometimes uncooperative, jurisdictions.
Q: Can blockchain technology revolutionize copyright management?
A: Blockchain has the potential to significantly improve copyright management by:
- Creating unalterable records of rights ownership and licensing
- Enabling automated, clear, and direct royalty payments to rights holders
- Facilitating the use of digital assets in new ways through things like clear and efficient micro-licensing of works and public performance rights
- Providing an easy and efficient way to track the many uses to which digital assets can be put.
Q: In what ways can people play a part in ensuring that their own and others’ intellectual property rights are honored and upheld?
A: People can help ensure that intellectual property rights are honored and upheld by:
- Knowing and respecting the various forms of intellectual property rights
- Learning about and disseminating the information that intellectual property rights is valuable
- Paying for and demanding that creators be compensated for the content/services they provide
- Not turning a blind eye to infringement when you see it and reporting it to someone who can do something about it.
Read Also: The Role of Corporate Governance in Mitigating Legal Risks Globally