Copyright and Intellectual Property: Digital Age and Obsolescence

This essay delves into the evolution of copyright and intellectual property in the digital age, exploring the challenges posed by digitalization, file sharing, and cloud technology. It examines the aim and application of copyright laws, the concept of fair use, and instances of copyright infringement. The essay further analyzes the impact of the digital age on copyright, including the rise of fan fiction, digital libraries, and sampling. It discusses how these developments have challenged the traditional proprietary nature of copyright and the extent to which the digital age has rendered copyright obsolete. The essay also explores the misuse of copyright, the complexity of copyright infringement, and the role of fair use in protecting freedom of expression, with a focus on academic use and plagiarism. The role of digitalization in the context of sampling and fan fiction is also discussed.

Running head: COPYRIGHT AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Copyright and Intellectual Property
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Topic: The digital age has rendered copyright obsolete. To what extent do you agree with this
and why?
Introduction
Copyright has had a long history of disputes and lawsuits in its record. The idea of
copyright was introduced to provide protection to the legitimate creators from unlawful
threats (Lemley 2019). While copyright is mainly discussed in the context of music and
inventions or scientific doctrines, they are equally applicable to any new ideas or literary
works. Digital age has challenged the propertarian nature of copyright and has normalized
fair use policy which decriminalized the non-commercial use of protected material (Edwards
et al. 2016). In this essay, the aim and importance of copyrights, their changing nature
through time and mainly during the digital age have been analyzed. Additionally, its
applicability in the present time where digital libraries, cloud computing and fan fictions are
becoming popular by day have also been evaluated.
Discussion
Aim of copyright
The application of copyright had initially been the protection of the creators, inventors
and authors. The copyright laws were too harsh and went too far to protect their rights. In
time, they became the machinery for the authors and inventors to generate money on the basis
of violation and infringement (Hobbs 2018). Many times copyrights have been used for
stopping people from creating or inventing new ideas, threatening them with a possible
copyright violation. Copyright, since then has remained at the disposal of the enterprises or
media houses as they are ones that use the protections ensured by copyrights to exact money
from innocent and unknown users.

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Copyright initially had been too proprietary. It considered the matters that copyright
protected as intellectual property and thus gave the creators an absolute right and ownership
on their creation that extended even after their death (Hobbs 2019). Copyright is also acts as
the machinery for free speech and expression of thoughts. It gives the creators an incentive
create new things or bring new ideas. The idea of fair use clashes violently with the
proprietarian approach that earlier copyright regulations had. The Proprietarian approach
prohibits any use of the works that is protected by the law (Danaher, Smith and Telang 2017).
Any kind of adaptation, borrowing or resemblance would cause the accuser to pay money to
the license holder. The fair use policy on the other hand believes that copyright protected
materials can be used for non-commercial purposes.
Misuse of copyright
Copyright laws have been created to support the free creative expression of people. If
thought closely, the idea of media literacy becomes impossible and non-existent without the
protections that copyright laws provide. The problem with copyright laws is that they vary
from country to country and the interpretation of fair use change with changing time. Earlier,
piracy of any kind was seen as it was, theft (Aufderheide and Jaszi 2018). Now, many
researchers have argued that piracy is a necessary evil and it inspires greater creativity. As
many of the world’s greatest media channels like Hollywood or Radio transmissions were
created by piracy, it is believed that it has ultimately led to greater good.
Though the idea of copyright protection and licenses are mostly used and exacted by
media industry, misuse can also happen with literary and other inventions. There have been
extensive arguments about the theft if intellectual property and how that can be stopped. Due
to the lack of standardized copyright laws and differences in interpretation by the justice
system, the authors are often left unprotected and might slowly loose the interest to invent or

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create new ideas due to prior losses (Klein, Meier and Powers 2017). The imposition of
copyright is still largely on the creators and the penalty too is exacted from them. In music
industry, when an author’s music is used for further covers, they are forced to give up a
portion of their royalty, thus leading to a further loss for them.
Infringement and Fair use
Copyright infringement is an extremely complex context. Even the laws and its
interpretation vary from country to country. Another problem regarding copyright laws are
that there are even fewer people that understand the fine line that separates one form the other
(Lohmann 2017). Copyright infringements are generally interpreted on the basis of four
aspects. The way the material is used and the aim of the use, the nature of the work, the
quantity taken from the original work and the commercial gain it has made decides whether if
the use can be termed as infringement or as fair use.
The fair use policy that protects the private and non-commercial use of copyright has
made copyright a machinery for freedom of expressions. The fair use law enables the
criticism and parodying of the existing creations. While this falls truly under fair use policy,
there are many scenarios where violations are made. The fair use regulations have made
copyright more flexible and has reduced the proprietary nature of the laws that threatened the
free expression and opinion (Butland and Sullivan 2018). It has been argued by many
researchers that the flexibility that the fair use law provides, comes with a price. The
determination of fair use falls largely on the courts and thus the outcomes may vary. The
cases regarding copyright violation and fair use that has brought media attention have
brought varied results and thus provide the arguers of fair use an opportunity.
Academic use of existing work has been argued in many manner. Plagiarism has been
considered as one of the most shameful aspects of intellectual property theft. Plagiarism can

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be defined as the use of other people’s work, ideas or theories as one’s own. When
academicians take credit of someone else’s thoughts or steal from others without giving
credibility to the author (Danaher, B., Smith and Telang 2017). It falls directly to the genre of
clear copyright violation. This same scenario is also present in the music industry, where
people steal lyrics, tunes, harmony and concepts from other works and release it as their own.
Due to the advent of digital age and emerging technologies, copyright laws have become
almost obsolete as digital age provides many opportunities where users might enjoy unlimited
access to content without paying a single penny.
How digitalization changes copyright use
Digitalization has brought with it the idea of free use and file sharing. These two
aspects has made the protections of copyright almost null and void. The earlier copyright
laws prevented any personal use of materials and ideas without paying royalty to the license
owner. The file sharing and file hosting system enables the internet users to access unlimited
amount of content online without paying anybody (Wu 2017). The greatest hit was taken by
the music industry as the file sharing and file hosting creates global infringement of
copyrights. Later on, the recording companies started to impose penalty on the college
students when they shared music with their peers. File hosting sites like YouTube too started
limiting access to certain contents and contents in films and parodies are eliminated due to
supposed infringement accusations.
Later, with the introduction of fair use and invention of cloud technology, the idea of
copyright has become almost obsolete in the present era. Cloud technology allows users to
save huge amount of data without any outside information. It also allows anonymous sharing
of unlimited files. These laws and technologies mainly affects the media and music industry
as they are mostly used for music sharing. Other mixing technologies also takes away the

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protection of the music companies as new covers and versions can be created for the same
music without paying for the license (Torous and Nebeker 2017). With social media, the
mitigation of the copyright laws have become much more intense. People use contents
indiscriminately and share them with their social media circles. They mash up songs, remix
them or create new versions that becomes artwork of their own.
Sampling
Sampling is a phenomenon where people use a portion of an existing music and reuse
it with modification. This activity has intensified the debate regarding fair use and copyright
licenses (Schuster et al. 2019). Due to the effects of social media, music sampling is
widespread and thus, in most cases, the cases that were built on the infringement of music on
sampling mostly found that it was almost impossible to prove definitively that their use has
been unfair and commercialized (Bently et al. 2019). Moreover, the accused could easily
prove that they were not aware of the original version and show their innocence on the
grounds of fair use.
Many of the music makers also have shown support for sampling and remixing their
songs as research has shown that sampling ultimately makes them more popular and
increases the sales of the original music (Simcoe and Watson 2019). The reason behind this is
that the more a work is talked about in the internet, it becomes more viral. People critiquing
the sampling also searches the original work and the popularity of the work increases. This
leads to higher return on royalty which ultimately incurs profit to the creator of the original
work (Menell 2016). Thus, while, many may argue that due to the effects of digitalization,
the copyright laws have been rendered obsolete, digitalization has brought the possibility of
profiting out of copyright violation. This is also true in other genres such as literature and
technology.

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Fan fiction
Fan fiction has gained recent popularity in the literary field. Fan fictions are literature
and artwork created by fans of popular literary works. In this regard, fan fictions on Harry
Potter or Lord of Rings fan fictions (Carson 2017). The stories that these fans write are based
on the existing popular stories or series. Thus, they invoke the considerations of copyrights. It
has been already established that present copyright laws are not constricting but rather are
machineries for freedom of expression (Schwabach 2016). This limitation has made way for
the creation of fan fictions and thus, they are considered among greatest examples of free and
fair use of copyright laws. Digitalization is the key reason for which fan fiction has become
such a huge phenomenon.
Due to digitalization, the ease of sharing content has increased and people all over the
world has access to it. Due to the extension of copyright till 70 years after the death of the
original author, authors and creators now can enjoy benefits of it (Cai 2018). Despite this
extension, it cannot stop the common users and critiques to use the works that still fall under
the copyright. It means that they can be discussed, critiqued or remixed as people desire. This
has given birth to the large fandom that has led to film adaptations and theatrical
representations of these fan produced works. Authors too, have given mixed reactions when it
comes to reproducing their work (Kallio 2018). While many of the authors agree that fan
fiction has increased the popularity of their work, others argue that fans cannot understand
the essence of the characters that they create.
The fan fictions create a sense of community and belonging and keeps dream world of
the readers intact. This leads to larger involvement into the literary or media work and the
fans or the creators of these fandoms become more demanding about the relaxations of the
existing laws (Price and Robinson 2017). This is also another reason for which the fair use

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policies have been revised and fan fictions have become much more widely accepted. The
question falls on the fact that to what extent are the people belonging to the fan fiction
production are aware of the copyright laws and clause of violation. Researchers have found
that these communities have surprisingly good knowledge about the existing policies and
they create a community where people follow some normative rules by default (Fiesler and
Bruckman 2019).
Digital library and plagiarism
Digital libraries are much like file sharing and file hosting sites where a large number
of literary works can be used and read (Folk-Farber 2016). This gives the users easy access to
existing literature and contribution of authors. The digital libraries in many ways violate the
copyright laws and have faced much problem. Despite that, they provide a good source of
knowledge and ease of access which traditional libraries cannot give (Yu 2019). Keyword
search and genre based categorization helps readers find books and journals easily and
reference them as needed. This leads to the idea of plagiarism which is one of the most
commonly debated issue in academic practices. Plagiarism violates the basic rights of an
author and takes away their credibility and contribution.
Is copyright still applicable?
In this digital age, it has become evident by now that copyright as it was known
traditionally has lost much of the aspects that characterized it. Digitalization has given ease in
sharing and anonymity which has almost forced the legislature to recognize the right to use
content and creations for non-commercial and personal use (Elkin-Koren and Fischman-Afori
2017). The fundamental basis of copyright law has been utilitarian and the laws are made so
that the researches and artworks are protected from threats of theft. In recent times, this threat
is so pervading that it has become normal that a work of art will be shared and remixed. The

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creators now have come to terms with the fact that in this digital era, the success and
incentive of their work can be best extracted from the popularity that they get from the buzz
from social media (Lohmann 2017). The more their work is discussed and videos played in
social media and channels like YouTube, the more they earn.
Fan fiction too, has rendered copyright obsolete to the degree that it has created a
different genre of literature. The fan fictions are the most appropriate example of free and fair
use (Katz 2019). The reason behind this is that they operate within a community and they
provide disclaimers on each story where they give credit to the author for the original
creation and state clearly about the inspirations that they have taken. Their aim of production
is completely non-commercial and for personal use and pleasure and thus there is no violation
(Fidler 2019). It has become so popular that they are adapted into cinema and theatre. Popular
movies like Percy Jackson, anime series like Naruto and theatrical representations of Harry
Potter and the Cursed Child. This leads to the obvious conclusion that Copyright though has
become out of date it still protects the original creator from indiscriminate use and legal
scenarios. In effect, it provides channel for creativity without taking away the freedom of the
audience to discuss or criticize.
Conclusion
From the above discussion it is easily understandable that the idea of copyright has
gone through significant changes over time. What started as a simple safeguard against theft
became one of the most useful machineries that companies used to exact penalties from
people using or sharing them innocently. Despite all the barriers that copyright created for the
common users, they found a way and digitalization brought the key to their problem. With
anonymous file sharing, file hosting and cloud computing, the users could send and share
files worldwide. As the internet and social media became much more powerful, the idea of

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copyright shifted and the concept of fair use was introduced. Fair use enabled the viewers and
spectators to discuss, criticize and remix or modify music and other works for non-
commercial purposes or non-malicious intent. With the popularity of fan fictions and music
sampling copyright now has become a nominality that only protects the creators in the
extreme situations. Thus, it is safe to conclude that digitalization truly has rendered copyright
obsolete.

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