Overcoming Property

Abstract:     
Online copyright enforcement represents one of the greatest current threats to online privacy. For the most part, however, the privacy implications of digital rights management systems go unexamined in the mainstream legislative and policy debates about the proper scope of copyright owner's rights. Instead, courts and some commentators (and many intellectual property lawyers) have characterized the design of DRM systems as grounded, unproblematically, in principles of copyright and contract law and justified by reference to a copyright owner's need to enforce its "property" rights. Yet it is far from obvious why this should be so. This essay undertakes a very preliminary exploration of several questions on the "property" side of this debate.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 8

Keywords: copyright, property, privacy

JEL Classification: K11, O34

Accepted Paper Series