ABSTRACT

The combination of digital and networked technologies has, like each new form of communications technology over time ‘disrupted’ predominant business models and challenged the assumptions behind them (Bower and Christensen 1995: 43). 1 In the case of the creative arts, they not only disrupt the traditional business model, but they also question the logic behind the idea of intellectual property. The assignment of intellectual property rights in the early part of the twenty-first century is in as contradictory a state of turmoil as it was in the twentieth century, and nineteenth and eighteenth centuries for that matter. This raises some important questions about the conceptual value of intellectual property rights in a digital age and also whether intellectual property rights can continue to be applied in the legal ways that were shaped by older forms of technology. As digitization replaced analogue forms of recording and enabled it to be transmitted electronically across networks, then traditional physical and legal forms of control over the music and film media became effectively useless. New technologies for delivering content emerged that sit outside the control of the traditional guardians, especially law. First peer-to-peer systems, such as Napster and Kazaa, developed and as bandwidth expanded in recent years, live streaming systems emerged such as eMusic, then Spotify and Apple, to name but a few.