Protecting Copyright In The Digital Environment

While the contours of copyright law have always been drawn by the developments in the technological world, the emergence of digital technologies towards the concluding decades of the twentieth century as defining paradigms of new age communication raised a whole new set of challenges to copyright regimes. The traditional notions of the basic concepts such as rights of reproduction and distribution have become inadequate and even irrelevant in the digital age. All works can now be digitalized whether they comprise texts, images, sound or diagrams and once digitalized the various elements such as images are all 'equal' and can be merged, transformed, manipulated or mixed to create an endless variety of new works. Earlier rights of reproduction distribution affected tangible physical copies only of a work. The new technologies brought in non-material and distribution. Physical reproductions were replaced by digital reproduction, which was easy as well as cost effective.