The Role of Law Reform in Addressing Emerging Technological Issues and Enforcing Rights

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Copyright is a technological advancement that has, in most cases, been thoroughly addressed through law reform. Copyright protects the works created by individuals. The Copyright Act (1998) prevents the stealing of one’s intellectual property and various international conventions extend this protection overseas. The main problem technology brings to the world of copyright is that better technology has increased copyright violations in the music and software industries. However, many of these cases in particular have been very successful. For example; an article featured in the New York Times stated “Add Grooveshark to the list of music websites that have been sued out of existence over copyright infringement. Grooveshark, a free streaming site that once had 35 million users which drew the ire of major record companies for failing to receive permission for hosting music — agreed to shut down, ending a series of lawsuits stretching back four years.” The Sydney Morning Herald reported on a case and stated that, “A YouTube clip had to be taken down because it breached the copyright of the TV hit Game of Thrones. YouTube took down the video due to a copyright claim from International Federation of Phonographic Industry.” It is also noted that. "Incorporating music or a sound recording into a video and uploading this to YouTube without the copyright owner's consent or a licence could constitute copyright infringement, unless the video maker can establish a fair dealing defence (e.g., for the purpose of parody or satire)." Finally, the New York Times reported on a case in which it stated that “Painters, illustrators, sculptors, photographers and the like deserve a royalty when their work is resold at a profit.” The article went on to say that “in the past two decades, resale royalties have become more common around the globe, with more than 70 countries adopting some version of the ‘droit de suite’ rule.” Although this recommendation fell through as it failed to gain support the statistics and the other two articles above do prove that law reform is keeping up to date, as best it can, with this constant issue of copyright.

In conclusion, technology has a high impact on not only society but the legal system. Society is constantly changing due to new technological advancements and the law is doing its best to try and keep up but in some cases, especially ones relating to cyber bullying, it is proving difficult to address these emerging technological issues whilst still enforcing individual rights. As a result of this barrier, law reform has not kept up to date with new technologies in some aspects. However, in other aspects of technology, copyright as an example, law reform is proving to be very effective at addressing society and the legal systems need for change due to emerging technological issues.