....Today both American and European copyrights, harmonised by treaty, are for 70 years beyond the life of the author and 95 years after publication, or 125 years after creation for works made "for hire" and owned by corporations.
....is the debate about copyright irrelevant? Eventually, perhaps. But first there will be constant warfare between those who see copyright protection as a threat to the new digital world, and those who see that world as a threat to their wallets. Certainly, the content industries are likely to experience the most upheaval. They may be able to retard the growth of copying on the internet for a time, but they cannot hold back the advance of technology altogether. This will undermine their existing business models, based as they are on print, analogue broadcasting and the sale of physical products such as compact discs. Even if the "total copyright protection" scenario sketched above prevails, content providers will have to reinvent themselves. But whatever happens, creativity is unlikely to grind to a halt. The show must go on.
- Communication is the lifeblood of politics, and every big change in communication technology, from the printing press to television, has eventually produced big, and often unexpected, changes in politics. As the internet becomes mobile and ubiquitous, it will bring about changes of its own. Precisely what these will be is not yet clear, but the earliest claims of cyber-dreamers - that the internet will produce a shift of power away from political elites to ordinary citizens - may well become reality. One of the big political debates of the next three decades will be about the relative merits of direct versus representative democracy.
....Those arguing for more direct democracy will reply that regular polls of the electorate should go a long way towards avoiding irrational policymaking. If voters find that they have made conflicting decisions, then another ballot can be held to resolve them. Moreover, even in a direct democracy not all intermediary institutions, such as political parties, government departments or even legislatures, will necessarily be abolished. Legislatures might survive to monitor elected governments, just as they do today, and to formulate and propose legislation. Voters might confine themselves to making the final decision about what legislation to enact. Evidence from the hundreds of initiatives held in Switzerland and in American states does not bear out fears that voters will take undue risks or oppress minorities. Electorates are generally risk-averse, upholding the status quo unless they are thoroughly convinced that change is needed.
- Worryingly, the same technological trends that are so rapidly eroding privacy in the West could put powerful tools in the hands of repressive regimes. As more human interactions are conducted and recorded electronically, as the ability to analyse databases grows and as video and other offline surveillance technologies become cheaper and more effective, it will become ever easier for authoritarian governments to set up systems of widespread surveillance. George Orwell's Big Brother of "1984" might yet become a reality, a few decades later than he expected.
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