Important legal developments regarding protection of copyrighted content against unauthorized copying

The ability to distribute copyrighted content in digital form through high capacity prerecorded discs and Internet-enabled transmissions has brought new challenges to the protection of such content from unauthorized use and copying. Legal and technical mechanisms to address these challenges are still very new, but important developments have occurred in the past few years. Because all of this is new, there are two reasons why researchers and developers of digital technologies need to understand the developments: first, to ensure that research and development is not conducted in a manner that is contrary to the new legal requirements; and second, to stimulate comments concerning legal developments that may have unintended consequences beyond the areas that are intended to be regulated. The purpose of this article is to provide an outline of certain important legal developments so that participants in the research and development field can be alerted to their existence and make appropriate inquiries and comments.