Conclusion: Reconciliation or Infinite Futility?

Abstract

The conclusion of this book is that machinery of copyright governance for modern popular media industries must compete (and interact) with omnipotent externalities, that is, the Internet, software, telecommunications and other related digital external technologies. Converging challenges are new and have caused irreconcilable shifts in the balance of power between the various stakeholders at the superstructual level. Challenges have led to:

• shifts in copyright regulation from the national level to regulation at the international/global level (see Chapter 2);

• shifts in consumer attitudes toward methods of popular culture consumption in Western society, that is, a convergence of legal and illegal modes (see Chapter 8); and

• shifts in industry focus from media piracy concerns to combined media piracy and transmission and communication concerns, that is, the challenge from the ‘neighbouring laws’ phenomenon and other external legitimate challenges (see Chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7).

The administrative expedient is one that we can come to only with regret and some misgiving: for it would do away with the simplicity, one may even say the pristine innocence, of copyright law. (Kaplan, 1966, p. 847)