Does copyright have a future?

Abstract

The Internet has been a frontier, and like many frontiers, a fundamentally lawless place. One of the early casualties was copyright. As a society, we have to decide whether we are willing to allow lawlessness on the global network to continue, or whether the Internet should be brought within the structures of civil society. One element is the renewal of proper respect for copyright. In creating the ACAP project, the publishing media have recognized that it is essential to work with technology, not against it, developing mechanisms to manage copyright in business relationships at machine to machine level. The time has come to tame the frontier, and allow the media to develop appropriate business models for the 21st Century.