A recent panel featuring Electronic Frontier Foundation‘s Julie Samuels, Techdirt‘s Mike Masnick and American University Washington College of Law professor, Michael Carroll posed some very interesting questions regarding future ownership of digital content. The panel’s topic was prompted by the Megaupload decisions. The panelists asked who owns digital content and that if you upload content to a website that has terms and conditions to own the content you upload (or changes those terms to own the content after you have already signed up), does that digital content become digital assets able to be seized by a bank in bankruptcy proceedings if the company/website folds? What happens to and who owns a person’s digital content when he dies? The panel further explained that they don’t feel copyright law is progressing fast enough to keep up with the speed of technology, although it appears lawmakers are open to change.
I know many folks in this business do not like the EFF because they feel the EFF is usually too radical in it’s approach to copyright, however, I think everyone can agree that the questions posed are ones definitely worth answering.
