Chapter 33

Afterword: A Closing Thought

We crossed a divide, from an era of media that directed content at the public into the era of interactive communication in which the public participation in the reshaping of content, from broadcasting to interactive digital communication. In an age marked by new means of transmitting data and information, the definition of legal rights to content will be tested as never before. Content will be exploited without consent in ways that traditionalists will abhor and new school creators applaud. An effort to bring order and reason to the new medium is being met with a countervailing cry: Copyright is dead. Internet guru Esther Dyson surmised that content cannot be protected, so there is really no reason to try. Turn it over to the wolves and earn your living selling ancillary goods and services—this is a bleak specter for those who believe in the regime of content developed over our history and whose livelihood is based on that system remaining in place a few more years.

The chances of copyright law, or trademark law, for that matter, dying in the new millennium is apocryphal. True, there is concern about how to protect rights, how to stop unauthorized copying in an age of wonderfully easy copy machinery. But that does not mean the system does not have technical and legal solutions. Rather, as the 21st century moves forward, we face the challenge of instilling in a literate electorate a new appreciation for the values that underlie the faith—a belief that the fruits of intellect deserve society's respect, praise, and protection.