Topics 2 and 3: Intellectual Property legal liability and liability of Information Location Tools
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This topic discusses the liability issues surrounding the use of intellectual property and the use of information location tools such as search engines and hypertext linking.
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Introduction
Digitisation of products poses serious problems for copyright. Thousands of perfect copies of products can be cheaply produced and widely disseminated throughout the globe via the internet and other communication networks. The copies suffer no degradation in quality. eDonkey, Kazaa, Grokster and other peer to peer systems undermine the whole ethos of copyright. Indeed, presently, American music and movie organisations and the British music industry are actively targeting both large scale and individual violators of copyright law.
Digitization is an international concern and as such needs to be controlled internationally. Thus, the World Intellectual Property Organisation [WIPO] has promulgated a number of initiatives designed to strengthen copyright protection across the world:
The WIPO Copyright Treaty
The WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty 
The main rights of copyright owners are the reproduction right and the right to disseminate that work to the public. Reproduction includes uploading the material. Dissemination is also an issue since the usual method of dissemination is through the sale of the products. On-deman英语论文网 【http://www.51lunwen.org】d online delivery is unlike a broadcast.
Moral rights become more important in the digital environment since it is so easy to morph or alter copyrighted material on the internet.
The ability to control rights is vital online. Licensing is essential for e-commerce so that consumers are given the license to download products. Increasingly, copyrighted products are not sold as a physical product but are licensed to consumers via the internet. This means that access to the material is governed by contract rather then copyright law. This also requires the development of technological tools to prevent infringement – anti-copy devices, encryption, passwords, fingerprinting and remuneration systems as well as copyproof CDs, DVDs that only operate in certain machines and DVDs that degrade over time.  Digital Rights Management systems are essential to ensure that the products can be tracked and protected.

Problems of new technology

The problems posed by new technology include the following;
How far should copyright protection extend in the digital environment?
What obligations should ISPs be subjected to?
What rights should performers have?
What about digital broadcasts?
Linking of copyright material – deep linking, framing and meta-tags
Database protection
Peer2peer file sharing systems
Open Source Software
The Fundamentals of Copyright
 
The primary UK legislation in this area is the Copyright Designs and Patents Ac 本文来自：英语论文网 【http://www.51lunwen.org】