Digital Copyright Monograph Now Available Online

The 90-page monograph on digital copyright written by Wiley Rein chair Bruce G. Joseph and former Wiley Rein partner Scott Bain is now available online as a free download from this website for your own personal use. The book, Copyright in the Digital World: Basics, Law, and Policy, was published in December, 2005, by the National Legal Center for the Public Interest, and includes material that should be useful for copyright beginners and advanced practitioners, alike. 

The book opens with a comprehensive introduction to copyright and the law applicable to technological protection measures.  It then addresses broad policy questions about the appropriate scope of copyright in the digital environment, discussing whether it is appropriate to analyze copyright rights in the same manner as rights in tangible property and the extent to which the law should empower copyright owners to exercise control over the use of their works.  Finally, the book examines two of the most difficult and contentious digital copyright issues facing courts and policy makers—the appropriate level of secondary liability, particularly that imposed on the providers of technology products and services, and the recently adopted statutory prohibitions against circumvention of the technologies used by copyright owners to protect their works.  Throughout the monograph, the book presents the fundamental question—is it time to reconsider and possibly redefine the scope of copyright rights to accommodate the digital world?

In his preface to the book, NLCPI's president at the time, Richard A. Hauser, notes, “Blending observations, legal analyses and policy suggestions, the authors provide an illuminating view of copyright law that should be useful to copyright novices as well as experts, and legal practitioners as well as policy makers.”

The book is copyright, 2005, Bruce G. Joseph and Scott E. Bain, and is now being made available courtesy of AEI, successor to NLCPI.