Copyright and Technology

The debate over copyright rages on, particularly in the field of technology. As usual, our scientific advances have outstripped our legal system's and probably, therefore, our ethical understanding's ability to keep up. I am fasinated by the potential of blogs and wikis and open source, but I certainly don't have an answer to the problems of commercial producers of material, especially of media like music and cds. Neverthless that is a commercial perspective. I had not thought, nor read much, about the implications of copyright and the way people use other people's material, particularly in the area of movies and television, rather than print media. So this article by Dan Duncan caught my attention. It introduces the idea of artistic integrity v filtering devices that can filter out, for example, objectionable material from movies, and the concept of fair use of television programmes. If, like me, you are a novice to the concepts behind the copyright debate, it will give you some good background.