D. The Complexity of Rights in an Electronic Environment
Managing the "bundle" of rights for a creative work becomes increasingly complex in an electronic environment. The primary problem is the sheer quantity of rights that must be administered. Web sites, for example, contain text, audio, design elements, and still and moving images that appear inextricably bound together on the site, but each may arise from separate sources with separate copyright interests. To legally use these works on the site, the site’s creator must identify and clear the copyright for each source. Creators of multimedia works struggle with this issue continually. Multimedia works are created from a series of separate "products" protected by copyright (images, text, audio, software programs), as well as materials that are not protected by copyright (background noises, public domain works), all assembled in a way that itself forms a new, and separately copyrightable, creative work.
The complexity inherent in various kinds of intellectual property adds to the confusion. Images, for example, can have extremely intricate layers of rights that make their digital distribution legally complicated. Multiple copies or "generations" of an image can be developed, with different rights emerging at each step in the process.25 For example, use of a digital image may involve rights clearance with a publisher, the original photographer, one or more copy photographers, and the creator of the work portrayed in the image. Even documentary photographs of works in the public domain may have layers of rights associated with them.26 The complex and often futile task of securing rights through all the derivative forms of a particular intellectual property has been likened to "tagging migratory animals."27
The worldwide scope of electronic networks adds international copyright law, and the laws of individual nations, to the equation. Materials distributed over electronic networks will not have a geographically restricted audience. The administration of foreign rights will need to be considered anew. How will they be implemented, monitored, and enforced?
The various traditions for managing intellectual property add another layer of complexity to rights management in an electronic environment. The music industry issues blanket licenses that give users access to all works in a repertoire for one fee. Stock photography agencies license their images individually for one-time use in very specific contexts. Software has been licensed by individual computer, or by licenses based on specifically defined network parameters. Since most uses of intellectual property in an electronic environment involve content from multiple sectors, conforming to and managing all the variations in licensing traditions is an enormous undertaking.
A. Intellectual Property Rights in the United States
B. A Brief History of Copyright
C. The Nature of Rights in Copyright
E. Current Rights Management Methods
F. The Emergence and Perseverance of Rights Management