Rami Olwan

Introduction

Over the last ten years we have seen enormous change in the way we construct process and disseminate information for the purposes such as education, research, business, governance and social dialogue.  It is now possible to communicate a story, message or image in the blink of an eye to a worldwide audience at very little cost.  This capacity has been extended in recent times by the development of broadband networks that allow rich text audio and visual material to be communicated at rapid speeds and third generation mobile technologies that allow communication from any location.

Along with this growth in capacity our social practices have also adapted to the new information environment. Collaborative, peer and user generated knowledge construction projects like Wikipedia, an online encyclopaedia created by its thousands of users, online social communities like flickr a user generated online photo library containing millions of photos and social networking places like MySpace and Facebook are prominent examples.   These new developments have been underpinned by the evolution of the Semantic Web  (making the Web a more dynamic information network through better management and processing of metadata) and Web 2.0 (covering in part the growth of rich user led applications).

However much of the digital content we access in the Internet world is subject to copyright and is owned by a particular person or company.  We have learnt through the many lawsuits over the distribution of peer to peer (p2p) file sharing software for mp3 formatted music that while the technology can provide enormous scope for access unless the law supports such access it will be unauthorised and could lead to legal liability.

The UAE has been at the forefront when it comes to the use of digital technologies in the Middle East. It is also amongst the most highly Internet connected countries in the Middle East with 2,300,000 Internet users as of March/08, 49.8% of the population, according to Emirates Internet Multimedia (EIM).

The purpose of this paper is to consider how copyright law in its current form fits the challenges of the digital age and in particular how it might be improved to promote the possibilities for innovation especially in developing countries.  We take the Federal Law No. (7) of 2002 (UAE) Pertaining to Copyrights and Neighbouring Rights as our case study.

Attachments:

Copyright and Innovation in the Digital Age.pdf

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