Copyright and electronic publishing

Abstract

Copyright is a product of the western capitalist communication environment of the last 500 years that has been based on printing. The long accepted concepts, rules and procedures can be hardly adopted to the new electronic information media and to the flow of information on computer networks. Numerous new problems emerge from electronic pubiishing, software proliferation, database access, multimedia production, handling of electronic books and joumals. Legal cases, explicit or implicit trade-offs mark the search for new ways of copyright issues in the new technological environment. It is not known whether the old tools of copyright can overcome the new phenomena, or a total change of paradigm and completely new approaches are needed. The author examines these problems, and offers an atternative approach.