Technological Protection Case Study

 A possible alternative or supplement to contract as a way of controlling content on-line is technology. Imagine a world in which technology, rather than law, limited what you could do with the content you viewed on the world wide web. For example, say you access a prominent news site (e.g. the New York Times, CNN, etc.). You find an article on a topic of interest. You press the print button and, instead of printing, a window pops up asking you to pay 50 cents. You click "ok" and the 50 cents is automatically deducted from your electronic cash account. Your printer starts printing. If you had clicked "no," a copy protection mechanism would have prevented you from printing the article out.

Systems that could implement the above scenario are already available. A number of companies offer just such "trusted systems" technology, which would enable content owners to place technological restrictions on what you can do with content accessed through the internet. For example, a company called Intertrust, Inc. offers such technology. IBM has also developed such technology. This article provides a good summary of such systems. Using such systems, content owners could restrict certain uses of their content; charge for other uses; charge by amount of time spent viewing, etc. Moreover, Congress is currently considering legislation that would give added boost to such systems by making it unlawful to circumvent anti-copying technology.

The question here is a broad one: Are these systems a good thing? How should the law respond to such technology? On the one hand, they certainly reduce the costs of preventing unauthorized copying. On the other hand, they can be used to do far more than simply limit copying. Should the law support these systems, as the proposals before Congress currently appear to do? Should the law be neutral, leaving it to hackers and others to find ways around the technology? Or should the law affirmatively limit the use of such technologies in order to ensure a broad realm of fair use?

Hypothetical 2: Technological Protection
Hypothetical 2: Sources

Back to Hypothetical 1: On-Line Contracts
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