An old story

The turn of the century. I will bought an explosion of technologies for creating and distributing music that didn't fit well within the old model of protection. For the first time in human history........ ordinary citizens could access a wide range of music on demand. The problem for the composers. However, was that it didn't share the wealth from this new form of access.

Copyright at the time, protected the composer and arranger, by giving them exclusive right to control the public performance of their work; any reproduction of sheet music to support the public performance; and any arrangements, other were derived from their original work. This mix of protections was crafted by Congress to reward artists for their creativity by creating incentives for artists to produce great new work.

Doesn't this sound familiar!

This extract from Lawrence Lessing's book Remix , making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy published in 2008 does not describe the problems faced by intellectual property right owners at the turn of the 21st century with the digitalisation of music, but rather, the problem at the turn of the 20th century faced with the invention of the phonographic and the player piano.

The challenge presented to copyright by digitalisation is not new in is the same challenge that copyright seems to face each time. There is a leap in technology behind the reproduction and distribution of media output.

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