property in the digital age
I think the main reason we have such a huge debate intellectual concerning property/copy right laws right now is the law/decision maker's definition of ownership differs greatly with how the general public percieves it. When we buy a magazine, cd, or any physical object, we the consumer assumes full ownership of it. We can do anything we want with it – break it up, reassemble it, burn it, whatever. But with creative content it becomes a huge debate on whether you are hurting the originator's sales or not – something which I believe is extremely hard to prove.
Anyways, laws concerning copy right and intellectual property need to be updated to serve the public better. Obviously somethings such as brand names need to be protected, but accecss to digital content should be more lenient. I feel that using segements from other songs/movies/videos should be no different than writing a research paper. As long as you give the originator credit, you're good. I don't foresee such changes to over go through our legislations any time soon though.
There is another problem that is unique to the digital age - how can authors/creators get paid? I think micropayments is the way to go, though I think a viable system is still at least 3-4 years away. People will pay for digital content - iTunes is a prime example of something that works. Obviously there are somethings nobody will pay money for, but for most creative content people will be willing to pay. While I think applying micropayments to news articles and comic stripes is much harder, I don't think it is entirely impossible. Quality of content and ease of use is the key to getting people to open up their wallets.
I sometimes feel the whole intellectural property debates is magnified by cultural differences. American's concept of ownership/fame/fortune are in some ways very odd to me, and it would be interesting to see how other cultures deal with these issues. One of the problems though, is that most countries base their intellectual property laws on America's. It would be interesting to see what each country would come up if they each wrote their own rules.