The Impact of the Digital Age on Copyright and Innovation

This essay delves into the evolving landscape of copyright in the digital age, arguing that traditional intellectual property rights are becoming obsolete due to technological advancements. It explores how innovations like personal computers and the internet have revolutionized information sharing, making it easier to access, reproduce, and modify copyrighted material. The essay highlights challenges such as widespread copyright infringement on platforms like YouTube, the ease of data replication, and the difficulties in enforcing copyright laws against a large number of violators. It further discusses how globalization and the rise of digital technologies have facilitated the copying of products and innovations, impacting industries like fashion and music. The essay emphasizes the need for companies to invest in data security and adapt their strategies to protect their intellectual property, particularly in a competitive environment where innovation is crucial for success. It concludes by examining the impact of the digital era on copyright and the challenges faced by both large and small businesses in safeguarding their intellectual property rights.

Digital age and copyright
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Digital age and copyright
Digital age has rendered copyright obsolete
Intellectual property rights have played a major role in the growth of the organisation
especially in terms of the fact that innovation is the primary tool of gaining success. For an
organisation that is able to innovate their products and services at regular intervals, it has
become critical for the management to look at the challenges that might be present in front of
the innovating team. However in the digital age preserving the ideas and ensuring that it will
not be imitated in some or the other manner is difficult (Frankel and Gervais, 2014). This
essay is going to discuss the validity of the point that in the digital age copyright has become
obsolete.
Debates have been going on over this matter that whether in the digital age copyright has
become obsolete. Copyright is a legal concept that protects the rights of the innovators in
terms of gaining benefits from it. It is present in different nations. It is generally described as
the rights or privileges that are exclusively provided to the creators of small piece of work for
a short duration of time. Copyright laws defines the “right to copy” anyone’s work while at
the same time giving the copyright holder some due rights and credits of having published the
work. The laws related to this right determine the people that are eligible to utilise specific
piece of work, the kinds of benefits and the person that performs that work (Gervais, 2012).
In the current time it is highly used by the individuals from the firms to protect their work or
innovation so that maximum benefits can be achieved through it. However due to the
challenges that communication network and technology brings to copyright is making this
intellectual property right obsolete.
The inventions such as personal computers and advanced internet network has revolutionised
the way in which people interact and due to this challenges in front of the companies have got
bigger as people shares things on the online mediums in a faster manner. Since storage and
transmitting of the information has become easier hence people are easily able to access the
data that even they are not permitted to or the data that should not have to be accessed by
them. The technologies such as IoT and many other cloud systems are vulnerable to the
attacks and the companies that are storing their data on such technologies (Menell, 2016). It
is because it is a low cost technology to store data. This can also be possible when the
organisations are able to move faster rate. People and the organisations are also transferring

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Digital age and copyright
and storing the data on these mediums as they are able to reduce the challenges that were
present in the traditional mediums. Books, Journals, some innovation article, research papers
and other type of confidential items can be shared to multiple people sitting at different
locations in different parts of the world. The cost and the time that is taken for transferring
the data without any compromise on quality are very less. But the obsoleteness comes from
the fact that it can be reproduced easily and can be processed fast. Technology makes it easy
for the people to make changes in the files that is being transferred from one place to another.
Due to this the challenges becomes bigger and making the copyright issue obsolete
(MacQueen, 2014).
In today’s time musicians are eager to launch their music videos on the platforms such as
You-tube and there are many people that are also eager to copy these items. They also repost
them from their own channels either in same manner or making slight changes in the content
or format. They are doing this for earning money from their own you-tube channels. This is
complete violation of the copyright which the music company or an individual has taken for
that particular thing. The numbers of channels or individuals that are doing this violation is so
large that even the copyright holder is unable to manage the intellectual property right or
complain against them from the You-tube. Since all the processes are done without the
consent of the copyright holder hence the role of the copyright becomes obsolete (Rogers,
2013). It is hard to file a suit of such a large amount of people that are violating the copyright.
It is seen that classical music are more under the pressure of being copied by the people as
their copyright have already being expired hence people also do not worry about getting
punished (Demers, 2006). In the modern days copyrights are only used against another
company by the copyright holder company since such parties will be less and will be easier to
sue them. In the time when the management of the companies are highly conscious about data
leaks such an era of digital technology has empowered them. It is seen that interests of
numbers of players are involved in the copyright hence protection of intellectual property
rights become extremely essential. It is seen that different types of digital mediums are used
for sharing the data and with the help of advanced technologies people sitting in another part
of the world can easily copy it. With help of digital technology one can easily replicate the
products but that looks good to the consumers however it is not good every time.
The era of technology has boosted Globalisation hence companies are also crossing their
borders to do business at the international levels. It is seen that modern day technologies
helps the individuals to look at the each and every aspect of any products and accordingly

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Digital age and copyright
they can design the copy of that item and gain profits from them. For organisations from the
fashion industry this has copyright as an intellectual property has become more obsolete
(Horan, 2013). This can be understood by the fact that there are many products of the
company that are being copied by small scale business or illegal business. They are copying
many types of things that come under the copyright act. These small scale businesses
generate huge amount of benefit from it and the bigger firms that is the copyright holder of
that product are facing huge amount of loss. It is sometimes hard to differentiate between
original and duplicated product of the company hence people also gets deceived and they
purchase the products that are not original. This has impact on the way an organisation is able
to deal with new innovations (Moyse, 2016). This is because whenever a company aims to
bring totally new kinds of product, it is not easier for them to reduce the issues such as
copyright.
Copyright violation is the major reason why the organisations are investing higher on the
security and data technology. This can be understood in terms of the fact that companies are
investing higher on the data centres and data management technologies. These data centres
are protected through multiple layers of security protocols that ensure that any loss or leak to
the data does not occur. However it is seen that when a file is shared at the multiple locations
i.e. multiple stakeholders then it is difficult for the company to protect that because even after
having the copyright it is highly likely that data can be lost from any one spot (Courtney,
2014). It is seen that since the stealers have advanced technologies to deal with hence even
after multiple layers of security, they are able to steal the content. Even company’s policies
are unable to protect the intellectual property rights of the company hence making copyright
more obsolete.
Copyright issues have been from the start of the digital era where one compact disc was
purchased original and multiple copies of it was made from it. Due to this many of the
cassette companies got closed even when their works have been appreciated by many of the
people. Thousands of GBs of data can be transferred within hours from one place to another
(Karanicolas, 2013). The impact of it could be seen in the case of entertainment industry
where movie released in one part of the world gets distributed in other parts of the world even
when the actual copyright owner of that movie had not released it in that particular nation.
Since companies invest money on their copyright purchase hence when they see that they are
unable to achieve as much benefits as they wanted then their trust on copyright reduces which
again has impact on making copyright obsolete.

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Digital age and copyright
It is seen that it is the people’s mentality that also had affected the copyright violation. Since
copyrighted product has higher cost attached with it hence people also purchase the products
that are pirated. This is major reason the pirated companies generate higher profits and the
company that has actually made the innovation and made changes in the product are not able
to generate higher profits (Wheeldon, 2014). This is a much bigger problem for the individual
who has generated some idea or product on his self and had taken the copyright. This is
because they have less legal power to fight against such a large network of the people that
can do piracy. They also do not have such a huge security network that they could protect the
piracy of their intellectual property. Since competition has gone to much higher levels hence
it is critical for the management to make strategies that are long ranging. These strategies are
supported by the products and services that are available with the company and they arrange
their resources accordingly. If the resources can be copied then there is greater chance that
company will not be able to provide desired benefits to their investors (Di Palma, 2013).
Copyright has become obsolete because companies that are in the same business are peeping
into the innovations done by their competitors so that they can also copy and stay in the fight.
In this environment laws related to the copyright become obsolete. For an organisation that
has limited resources they need to ensure that they will be able to reduce the chances of
leakage of their idea. This is necessary for the growth of the organisation and rewards that
they aim to achieve. It is also the fact that large amount of investments are invested by the
researchers for generating any new idea and when copyright law is unable to protect the
intellectual property related to it then it is higher chance that they will lose some significant
benefits and it could company in difficult situations (Lynch and Fontaine, 2014). This is
much bigger challenge for the smaller companies that aim to fight with the bigger companies
that have enough of resources and talents to replicate their innovation. This makes them
vulnerable to either failure or huge losses. The pirates even do not care about the nation and
its image (Mason, 2009).
It is also the fact that when the copyright law was made it was seen that only few people or
organisation who was the competitors were doing copyright violation. But do to digital era
anyone from any corner of the world was capable of doing the copyright violation easily
(National Research Council, 2013). It is seen that very small amount of change is done in the
original work and it is produced to the people in the new form and they are gaining the
benefits. The original copyright holder cannot do anything about it.

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Digital age and copyright
One of the negative impacts of the digital era and the globalisation in making the copyright
obsolete is the fact that any people in any other part of the world copies the original work and
the copyright holder does not even knows about it. This is why doing or not doing copyright
isn’t affecting the stealers. However it is also the fact that copyright is done in today’s time so
that any of the individual or organisation cannot steal the work legally (Liebesman, 2016).
Most of the things are done illegally but if the laws are eliminated then there is a greater
chance that original work can get stolen quite often and openly and the original makers of the
idea or work will have no right to claim their work and achieve benefits that they can.
Copyright gives exclusive rights and advantage in the market (Smiers & Van Schijndel,
2009).
It is seen that there is a very big population who does not even knows about the copyright or
are not educated about the intellectual property rights does not know how to protect their own
work or what can be the implications of using the other’s work. However their scope is so
less that it does not affects the bigger firms on the larger context. In future when the global
connectivity of people and institutions will increase there is higher chance that copyright will
have no importance or it will become obsolete (Chused, 2014). Copyright has become
obsolete because there is no implementation of this law on the ground levels. It is seen that
police had not been so strict in implementing laws and this is higher in the case of developing
nations where the network of piracy is very big. The implementation of laws by the law
enforcement agencies are also not done in an appropriate manner and strictly. There are no
significant efforts being put by the government also to reduce the piracy in the market. Since
the root cause of these problems lies in the fact that it is highly profitable and least efforts are
required in it hence people are also attracted to make the work done in an appropriate
manner. A global network is required to reduce the chances of copyright becoming obsolete
(Fry, 2010). A better mechanism on the channels like You-tube is required so as to ensure
that any people cannot take the work of another.
In conclusion it can be said that the numbers of people that are involved in the copyright
violation are huge. The digital channels have helped them to steal the works of others and
earn money from it. In the lack of proper implementation of the copyright laws it is becoming
difficult for the law enforcement agencies to stop these things at the ground levels.

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Digital age and copyright
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