Digital copyright enforcement: Between piracy and privacy

Abstract

Copyright and privacy are two fundamental values for a democratic society, since both enhance the development of each individual's personality. Nevertheless, in cyberspace, copyright enforcement and the right to informational self determination have become two clashing realities. In fact, with the arrival of digital technology, especially the Internet, rightholders, facing massive on-line copyright infringements, mainly by file-sharers on peer-to-peer (P2P) systems, started developing more and more intrusive new enforcement strategies in electronic communications as a means to identify the infringers and the committed infractions. The goal of the present paper is to study, in a context where massive unauthorized uses of copyrighted works is an undeniable reality, how the boundaries between what is public or private become fainter, whether the use of tracking software is consistent with personal data protection legislation, and whether it is possible to reconcile these two human rights. © 2011, IGI Global.