Vitrium Systems

There is a significant debate taking place over how the internet should be managed in the near future. On one side are respectable members of the media, as well as many other establishment figures and politicians. On the other are supporters of unbridled speech and organizations that believe in the free flow of information. There are valid points on both sides, but much of the debate is lost in the confusion of public actions. For instance, on January 18, 2012, people saw a major internet blackout meant to protest the introduction of two laws in Congress.

The PROTECT IP Act
One of these laws was sponsored and largely written by Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont. The legislation, called the PROTECT IP Act or Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property, was designed to solve many of the problems that were present without the use of document protection and other forms of digital rights management.

Previous laws have been debated and passed in the United States and internationally that sought to deal with piracy and standardize document DRM. However, many of them failed to adequately address the activities of people who frequently broke the law online.

Enhanced powers
The bulk of the Protect IP Act, or PIPA, was an authorization of expanded powers for federal regulators and the U.S. Justice Department. Essentially, PIPA would have provided the government with the ability to remove and disable access to websites known to make illegal copies, counterfeit goods and other products available that violated established copyrights.

What's more, liability for copyright infringement was the responsibility of the host, as well as any websites and domains that possessed links to those pages. This could result in a massive breakdown in the structures of many free services such as Wikipedia and Twitter.

Making real changes
Proponents of PIPA (and the House of Representative's mirror legislation, the Stop Online Piracy Act) argue that without actionable powers or teeth on a law, it's impossible to police the world wide web. The cost of sending attorneys to comb the internet looking for copyright infringement is too high even for most large organizations, and some enforcement needs to take place to keep copyrights safe. PIPA failed to pass, so for the time being, companies should stick to the only proven formula for protecting sensitive materials and copyrighted media – document DRM.

However, there are many reasons people aligned themselves against the legislation and whose efforts culminated in the January 18 blackouts. In part two, we'll examine their arguments as well as some possible solutions or middle ground both parties may be able to agree on.

Regulations that govern document protection and copyright law are constantly evolving. Considering that technology has taken massive leaps forward in the past decade, it's easy to see how governments can be forgiven for failing to correctly determine how content and media should be safeguarded from piracy and theft.

However, that doesn't mean there aren't occasional overhauls of copyright law and intellectual property protection. One of the most significant additions to both American and international legal canon (that is still largely followed by the international community) is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998. It is a codification of the findings of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and sought to formalize many of the points of two agreements – the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty. It was drafted into five sections, or titles, and was signed into law by President Clinton in 1998.

Title I
The initial portion of the Act implemented the WIPO treaties and expanded upon the number of nations that were included in their purview. The Berne Convention, which was previously the benchmark for international copyright law and document protection, did not include many countries that would subsequently become involved with the WIPO.

Title II
This legislation next limited internet service provider (ISP) liability for digital copyright infringement. This is still a contentious issue today, and forms much of the basis relating to the need for document DRM and other intellectual property protections. If the companies that provide internet access aren't forced to police what files they're facilitating, there are few organizations with the authority to do so. Therefore, companies must take their own steps to ensure the security of the content they produce.

Titles III-V
The next three sections of the DMCA include an assortment of minor protections and regulations. For instance, Title III ensures that copying during the course of maintenance and repair to computer systems isn't punishable under the law, while Title V includes an update to the Vessel Hull Design Protection Act that keeps international copyrights of ship designs safeguarded against theft and copying.

This law allows some redress for companies that have had their products stolen and used improperly and largely ignores a lot of the piracy that is common today. While international groups and governments are currently struggling to give businesses better tools for securing content, it is beneficial for the time being to use PDF security and other measures that will prevent the illicit use of documents and media. 

The Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest's Washington Declaration addresses many concerns public and private observers of copyright law have about the future. Governments, particularly the United States, exert a lot of control over how information is shared and distributed on the internet. As such, it's important for the right values to guide legislators as they apply international agreements and congressional laws to balancing freedom of speech with copyright principles. Consider some of the following points the Global Congress stressed in its August 2011 declaration.

Institutions of memory
One of the most important roles data and intellectual property play in society is the transmission of art and information. However, there will also always be a need for document protection of some kind, since there is a fine line between proprietary copyrighted material and media of cultural import. Therefore, governments should always take into account the rights of institutions of memory, such as museums, schools and archives when drafting copyright laws.

Contracts and protection
Copyright law has spent very little time in a single form in the United States. It has changed quite a bit from the first U.S. Copyright Act of 1790, and one of the most common shifts that has taken place in regards to this kind of regulation is the length of copyright terms. The Global Congress urges leaders to avoid lengthy and unfair copyright protection on certain types of media, which is one of the contributing factors to data piracy and the need for document DRM.

Patents
Schematics and designs for processes and mechanisms are some of the most highly sought after forms of intellectual property. Unfortunately, as the Washington Declaration outlines, this can move science and progress away from incentivizing patents themselves and toward the technology they describe. The declaration calls for a reform of this framework, which has led to many frivolous legal battles and causes trade information such as patents to require PDF security and other media protection tools standard.

Flexibility
Above all, the Global Congress feels national governments need to maintain flexibility when it comes to intellectual property. The suppression of the free exchange of ideas the internet encourages can be detrimental to businesses and individual citizens. What's more, the adoption of rigid standards across the world and throughout single countries may not be the best fit for a particular region. Instead, document protection can be tailored to certain needs so access is determined more by user privilege than geographic orientation.
 

One of the most confusing aspects of American and international copyright laws is fails to keep up with technological innovations. Laws meant to deal with dial-up internet connections and small hard drives are unable to effectively police an online world dominated by high-speed cable modems and SD cards that can easily hold over 100 gigabytes of information.

Most proposed legislation either goes too far or not far enough to guarantee document protection and copyright integrity. For example, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which was debated by Congress in 2012, was largely decried as detrimental to the free and open nature of the internet. Supposedly, this is because it gave too much power to government agencies to control information sharing in the name of intellectual property security.

While SOPA may have been temporarily shelved in favor of a more nuanced debate, it is still crucial for people and organizations to temper zealous calls for extreme document protection methods. As such, the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest released the Washington Declaration on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest. This ensures all attempts to regulate communication in the United States and internationally are fairly balanced between freedom of expression and protection for copyright holders.

Establishing control
One of the most important points covered in the Washington Declaration is a rejection of the idea that market forces will solve this problem. The Global Congress recognizes technology is moving too quickly to be effectively left to its own devices, and neither the public nor organizations that produced proprietary content will benefit without some intervention from the US government.

Fairness and due process
While document DRM and other copyright protection methods are important to this debate, it must be noted there will always be people who are capable of circumventing such tools and who will be subject to some sort of punishment. However, the Washington Declaration makes it clear the Global Congress is interested in the fairness of due process and holds the American justice system must be a central component for all legal proceedings involving copyright infringement.

Providing proper mechanisms
The declaration goes to great lengths to explain that many of the problems of piracy and intellectual property theft involve open-source software. Until free and fair use programs and materials are put on an equal footing with proprietary software and content, people will naturally be drawn to the theft of files that need to be protected by document rights management measures. 

There are plenty of threats to copyrights in the United States. People who are determined to access media they shouldn't or illicitly duplicate certain types of media pose sufficient danger to companies that content needs to be safeguarded with some kind of document DRM. However, there are particular nations in which copyrights are notoriously unguarded.

For instance, a 2009 study by the U.S. Trade Representative discovered that internet service providers (ISPs) and other organizations in countries such as France, Spain and Poland weren't protecting intellectual material nearly as much as copyright holders would like.

As a result, it's a good idea to have secure document protection when dealing with clients and customers. Additionally, most sensitive documents that appear or are transmitted on the internet ought to be sealed away using PDF protection because there's even a chance they could fall into spurious international hands.

Berne Convention signatories
The basis of international copyright law is the Berne Convention, which the United States became a signatory of in 1989. That agreement essentially cemented existing treaties and relationships among nations and compelled all media and content users to recognize the intellectual property laws of one nation even while operating in another. For example, a copyright license that was granted in the United States can remain valid even if someone wants to distribute a text file in Italy or Turkey – the same rules that apply to American users also apply to Italians and Turks.

The Berne Convention of 1989 also established the Universal Copyright Convention. This made it clear that the copyright symbol – © – denotes a file, type of content or media source that has been registered in a place where the Berne Convention's rules have taken effect. Therefore, this notice makes it clear that the source is protected under international agreement.

Unfortunately, there's no requirement that information has to be guarded by that kind of declaration. No content producer, writer, distributor or aggregator is compelled by any law, international or otherwise, to declare that a creation is copyrighted. That's why it's essential to use PDF security measures to ensure that people are aware of a work's protected nature.

When dealing with organizations in other countries, the most sensible course of action is to consult a legal professional. This allows access to recent changes to local copyright laws, knowledge of compliance with the Berne Convention and indications of what legal recourse is available. However, the best fail safe device might be some sort of password protected document DRM.

Intellectual property has been a concern for writers, artists and content aggregators for centuries. Even the United States has a rich history of safeguarding the rights of people and businesses that spend time arranging information and creating patterns that will turn a profit. However, only in the last few decades have products warranted anything like document DRM or electronic copyright legislation. Consider how laws and practices have changed since 1976 when the federal government first sought to confront the issue of electronic media and document protection.

1976 – The National Commission on New Technology Uses of Copyrighted Works
This meeting, also known as CONTU, was convened so some agreement could be reached on how to practically limit the use of copyrighted material in a world that featured rapidly developing technology. For instance, the emergence of photocopiers made it hard for legislators to strike a balance between what became known as fair use (scholarship, education, news or commentary) and commercial copyright infringement. One of the major determinations that would eventually impact document DRM and electronic distribution years later was the conclusion that profit is an important component of copyright infringement. Nonprofit organizations such as libraries are free to make some copies, but private businesses may not.

1988 – The Berne Convention
The United States became a Berne Convention signatory in 1988 to fall in line with other countries in their treatment of copyright law. In addition to agreeing upon penalties for international infringement, the Berne Convention also established that copyright notice doesn't necessarily have to inform users the materials they're viewing can't be copied or reproduced without permission. This is an important development in the formation of modern document DRM principles, for it demonstrates how many people will use it as they please, which necessitates the use of electronic measures to protect content.

1991 – Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service Co., Inc.
Laws regarding copyright protection are constantly changing, especially given how rapidly technology has advanced in the past couple decades. Consequently, the bulk of agreements on document protection and infringement come from court decisions. One of the first examples that has had an enormous impact on modern copyright practices was Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service Co., Inc. The compilation of phone numbers, business addresses and commercial information was deemed to not be an infringement of copyright, since what can be protected by that designation has to be a creative expression of originality and not created using freely available and objectively true data. 

Intellectual property has been a concern for writers, artists and content aggregators for centuries. Even the United States has a rich history of safeguarding the rights of people and businesses that spend time arranging information and creating patterns that will turn a profit. However, only in the last few decades have products warranted anything like document DRM or electronic copyright legislation. Consider how laws and practices have changed since 1976 when the federal government first sought to confront the issue of electronic media and document protection.

1976 – The National Commission on New Technology Uses of Copyrighted Works
This meeting, also known as CONTU, was convened so some agreement could be reached on how to practically limit the use of copyrighted material in a world that featured rapidly developing technology. For instance, the emergence of photocopiers made it hard for legislators to strike a balance between what became known as fair use (scholarship, education, news or commentary) and commercial copyright infringement. One of the major determinations that would eventually impact document DRM and electronic distribution years later was the conclusion that profit is an important component of copyright infringement. Nonprofit organizations such as libraries are free to make some copies, but private businesses may not.

1988 – The Berne Convention
The United States became a Berne Convention signatory in 1988 to fall in line with other countries in their treatment of copyright law. In addition to agreeing upon penalties for international infringement, the Berne Convention also established that copyright notice doesn't necessarily have to inform users the materials they're viewing can't be copied or reproduced without permission. This is an important development in the formation of modern document DRM principles, for it demonstrates how many people will use it as they please, which necessitates the use of electronic measures to protect content.

1991 – Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service Co., Inc.
Laws regarding copyright protection are constantly changing, especially given how rapidly technology has advanced in the past couple decades. Consequently, the bulk of agreements on document protection and infringement come from court decisions. One of the first examples that has had an enormous impact on modern copyright practices was Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service Co., Inc. The compilation of phone numbers, business addresses and commercial information was deemed to not be an infringement of copyright, since what can be protected by that designation has to be a creative expression of originality and not created using freely available and objectively true data. 

The use of copyrights and other legal protections to keep content from being misused may seem natural to people today, but it has evolved quite a bit over time. The United States was founded on certain principles such as the freedom of expression and the press. While those sentiments affected early treatments of document protection and information propriety, it was not until 1976 that the bulk of copyright law as we know it came to be.

Early beginnings
The first legislation to directly address the issue was the Copyright Act of 1790. Because the scope of document protection was so much more limited than it is today, the types of media and content this law addressed were very basic. Essentially, it was only possible to protect mass media stories such as newspapers and magazines, maps, books and other examples of the written word. The Act allowed for copyrights to exist for 14 years, after which holders of this protection could apply to have their copyrights extended for another 14 years. Instead of a local patent office or national headquarters, people seeking this kind of protection would visit their local court and file the appropriate paperwork.

Next steps
It would not be until 1831 that revisions were made to the act. However, at that time, the only concessions provided were to copyright holders who wanted more time to keep their works proprietary. From that year until 1891, copyright law was essentially unchanged save for a lengthening of the term of a copyright to 28 years.

By the turn of the century, the United States was receiving more immigrants and foreign products than ever before. As such, it was soon necessary to address the influx of knockoff books and media that didn't conform to American regulations. Consequently, the International Copyright Treaty of 1891 specifically forbid any kind of reproductions, since foreign entrepreneurs and rapidly accelerating printing technology made document protection more important than ever.

Shortly afterwards in 1909, amendments to copyright law were added to update the issue of authorship. As corporations became regular fixtures of the United States, their creations had to be safeguarded from undue reproduction or defamation. Therefore, organizations could hold copyright rather than individuals.

Modern times
Technology was once again the driving force behind the adaptation of document protection and copyright law over the course of the next century. However, the letter of the law was not formally altered until 1976 when the U.S. Copyright Act was formally revised. In part, it incorporated elements of the international Berne Convention to ensure American practices were in keeping with foreign habits. Additionally, it allowed for what is now called "fair use."

Essentially, the prevalence of photocopy machines and digital media today make it possible for certain non-commercial practices to use copyrighted material. However, activities such as scholarship, historical preservation, commentary, criticism, news, education and research can be considered "fair use" and do not allow companies to pursue prosecution or financial remuneration. 

Companies producing any kind of electronic data are likely creating a large amount of intellectual property. This can be hard to identify for companies that spend most of their days churning out content, but it may be even more difficult for research firms, industrial organizations and other groups accustomed to sharing data with other parties. As such, it's a good idea to have a firm grasp of intellectual property, which requires document protection or other copyright defenses.

Literary, artistic and scientific works
Authors and painters are not the only people who need to worry their materials are going to be taken by unscrupulous parties or inattentive professionals. There are also graphic designers, blog writers and even video editors who can have their work stolen and used for extralegal purposes. Scientists also need to be aware of the danger because without sufficient PDF security, papers and dissertations could have their contents stolen and manipulated to turn a profit.

Most definitions of intellectual property were derived by the Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization of 1967. One important sort of content that has been identified as intellectual property by court decisions as well as local and national law is software code. In fact, this might be the most threatened form of creative work, so be sure to use document DRM when sending such information.

Performances
Most companies don't employ interpretive dancers or stand-up comedians, so they probably won't have to concern themselves with protecting proprietary performances. However, other types of presentations can be considered intellectual property, such as lectures and other sorts of instructional videos. This is also true for transcripts of such media, so take that into account when deciding what files should have document protection attached to them.

Designs
Companies that work closely with clients to design machines, processes or even corporate models traditionally didn't worry about their ideas being taken and corrupted until they'd already put them into action. At that point, they would have already gotten a promotional and financial leg up, so the infraction wouldn't have been so damaging. Today, all the information that flows between organizations can be easily snatched from the digital world before anyone else has had an opportunity to do so. Prevent this from happening by putting some kind of password protection on all confidential files that are sent electronically. 

Copyright infringement and illicit information sharing are intrinsic parts of doing business on the internet. However, that doesn't mean companies producing original content or handling sensitive information need to take these affronts sitting down. The need for additional trademark security and document protection is one of the most important requirements modern companies have to address.

It may seem as if such measures need to be technologically advanced and incredibly expensive. However, it's actually quite easy to go about safeguarding data if you embrace some commonsense ideas and make sure to implement a strict policy of document DRM. Take the following steps to cut any data insecurity issues off before they spiral out of control.

Password protection
It may seem rather basic, but password protection should be your first line of defense against security breaches. That's because a lot of the problems organizations face begin as accidents that let just enough data trickle outside for a real problem to result. Prevent this by requiring PDF security in most departments and divisions through the use of passwords and other verification techniques.

Human resource screening
If your business has been threatened by informational problems in the past, it might be best to upgrade your human resource policies. Again, this doesn't mean you need to do a background check on people to ensure they aren't world-renowned hackers looking to rip you off. Instead, you'll want to be certain they're as good with computers as they claim. When supervisors need to devote time to training hires and cleaning up their mistakes, they aren't available to handle other threats.

Offshore legal systems
One important danger to doing business online comes from abroad. While the United States, parts of Europe, and other nations are committed to copyright protection, some countries aren't quite so dedicated. This means you'll always have to worry about unfair usage of your data, code or content in other places. Document DRM is essential to maintaining both profits and sole access to corporations' own creations.