As the new communication technologies proliferate, the need to
protect individual creativity and especially intellectual products will
increase exponentially. From 1982 to1986 seventeen nations passed
new copyright laws concerned mainly with computer software, semiconductor
products, home taping, piracy, satellite broadcasting and
folklore. National and international discussions of copyright include
the distribution of radio and television programmes by cable, public
lending and rental of copyrighted material, and works in the public
domain.” ‘Piracy of intellectual property is costing the United States tens
of billions of dollars in lost sales and royalties,’ said Gary M. Hoffman,
principal author of a 1989 study at Northwestern University. It will be
particularly difficult to register and monitor news and informational
messages created electronically and transmitted great distances by
computers over telephone lines. For years, global news flows and
video cassettes have been pirated without credit or compensation to
the producers. Photocopies make it easy to pirate books, magazines
and articles. Telefax enables intellectual pirates to operate at some
distance from source. Off-the-air videotaping simplifies the theft of
news, information and entertainment programmes for illegal use and
sale. A new hazard is appearing in the form of photojournalism. The
new digital photographic systems can alter pictures undetectably.
National Geographic magazine in 1982 slightly shifted one of the
Great Pyramids at Gaza to enable a photo to fit on the magazine’s
cover. Digital photography is faster and cheaper but tampering must
be banned if the product is to be credible. These and other breaches
of intellectual proprietary rights will become far more widespread
in the age of ISDN The networking of vast numbers of national and
international networks - conveying all manner of news, commentary
and background information - will raise the problem to the level of
major international concern.