In a globally interdependent world, the role of intellectual property could hardly be underestimated. What a person or a nation produces in terms of innovation, art, or recognizable brands should be comprehensively accepted as somebody's property. In contemporary legislation, these are dealt with by the laws of patenting, copyrighting and trademarking respectively. Historically though, these clearly demarcated fields of legislation have not been developed in such precise terms. In fact, one will not be wrong to assume that the very concept of owning ideas and their physical incarnations is a characteristically modern Western contrivance. As late as the mid-nineteenth century, the German philosopher Hegel still has had doubts about who the real owner of intellectual property is. Nowadays, powerful global economic organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) engage in clearly defined, universally accepted legislation for the protection of a variety of Intellectual Property rights spanning 142 and 177 nations respectively. At the same time, the counteraction of the newly blooming Internet, that claims to protect and foster the free distribution of information without boundaries of ideology or physical distance, disturbs the balance painfully established by a number of international treaties. Also, more traditional means of infringement of Intellectual Property rights, such as CD piracy, provide substantial revenue to the underground economy at the expense of losses for the legitimate owners of these property rights. Undoubtedly, the relationship between conception, legislation and infringement is a very dynamic one and is further complicated by the advent of digital technology and the anonymity of global networking.

The essential question is whose the right of ownership of intellectual property is. At the base of this lies an even more fundamental question: why do we take for granted that the authors or inventors of a certain artifact or of its abstract idea should be entitled to its possession? Throughout history different societies and influential thinkers have viewed this in often contradicting terms. Ecclesiastically ruled states of the past have not had a concept of the individual as an owner of his own self, let alone of the products of his intellectual ingenuity, art or invention. Undoubtedly, since the beginning of the commercially oriented modernity, the status of property has become pivotal to the concept of Western societies of themselves. The definitive postulate of Adam Smith that man is governed by his natural inclination to barter and trade has sounded the fanfare of contemporary Homo Iconomicus; a man on a mission to amass goods and participate in their turnabout in order to amass even more. With this inevitably comes the pride of creation and the subsequent desire to benefit from man's own exceptional advantage of being more ingenious or better able than others to produce a certain object or concept. This concept has survived into today's mentality almost unchanged but much more elaborated.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the undisputed authority of classical German philosophical thought, delves into the conceptual basis of jurisprudence and delivers a different outlook on intellectual property. His is a more elitist view on the issue of right over creation in the sense that it adds one more layer of significance to the concept itself. He recognizes the fact that artifacts could be of different types in relation to the amount of innovation and intellect invested in them, hence he disagrees with the treatment of pieces of art or literature or innovation as sheer material objects. In his Philosophy of Right, he says that possession of these may be "the subject of business as if they are things but there is something inward and mental about"(them) (Hegel, 41). The main argument that Hegel makes is that the Will, which is a distinctive characteristic of the human mind, can comprehend itself and thus own itself, i.e. the individual is immediate to itself because of the Will that constitutes and comprehends it. However, when it comes to the ownership of something that is external to the individual (i.e. a piece of art transformed from a concept into a solid medium), Hegel disagrees that there could be a relationship of direct ownership of the author of all rights over that artifact. The initial idea that constitutes the makeup of the artifact is alienated from its creator as soon as it ceases to be an abstract concept and is embodied in a medium. This process, which the German philosopher refers to as Alienation, constitutes the transition of mental property into the external world (Hegel, 41), in other words it becomes a thing-in-itself. Still, it does not have any free Will of its own but has absorbed within it the Will of its creator. That, Hegel says, is not enough to justify a claim of ownership, because the artifact is an object external to the mind and as such cannot be occupied by it. The actualization of an artifact comes from its externality to its creator, thus "it ceases to be restricted by my presence here and now and to the direct presence of my awareness and will." (Hegel, 47) This relationship of alienation of cause and effect in the material sphere is the key to Hegel's understanding of Intellectual Property in the legal sense. Once an idea is emanated into a piece of art, Hegel claims, the owner of a particular copy is fully in control of its entire value and modes of utilization. Furthermore, he says that the author's or the inventor's right over the product is not necessarily determined by the fact that he has disposed of a copy of his work. It does not follow that he should retain all rights of distribution and further multiplication of the work because when copies of the work have entered the public sphere, the owners of these copies partake in the ownership of the product as such, hence they are free to dispose of it in any manner they please.

This, at first glance communitarian approach, is actually an expression of Hegel's main philosophical concept, the emanation of the Absolute Idea in the context of history. Since mankind perpetuates its bank of knowledge through amassing information and building on it further, Hegel views innovation and artistic creation as necessary contributors to this pool of knowledge. Therefore, he advocates that people who own a piece of intellectual property should assimilate the knowledge imbedded in it and include it in their own knowledge database to use it as a leaping stone for their own original ideas. This spiral of self-perpetuating loops is driven by the agency of man as a creator of history. Altogether, the right of an author to his creation is in the form of a capital asset, Hegel states. That is, the alienation of the object because of its own particular existence still grants the initial concept a partial status of a thing that could be replicated and distributed by the author at his free volition.

How do Hegel's ideas translate into modern terms, where the media that store intellectual artifacts have become so technically abstract and have departed from physical representations? For one thing, contemporary political economy cannot tolerate murky and dubious musings on legal matters. That is not to say that Hegel's view is completely outdated or irrelevant, but that decisiveness in the law making of today has substituted Hegel's questioning spirit and has surprisingly made his outlook on intellectual property rights appear libertarian. No longer is it acceptable to split the ownership of the rights of reproduction and distribution between the author of the original idea, or matrix of the artifact, and the owners of copies of that artifact. Hegel's position on that is obviously influenced by the fact that in his day there have been no means of identical reproduction of objects, apart from the printing press, perhaps. Thus, he concludes that if a copy is made, as for example a copy of a painting, or a piece of music, or theatrical performance, these copies are not identical to the original, no matter how faithfully the reproduction is made because they reflect slight differences in technique and are executed by another's Will. Understanding this serves as a vindication for Hegel's position, for he could not have foreseen the creation of the copy machine, or the laser disc recorder, that are able to produce exact replicas of visual or audio artifacts.

The replicability of objects of art and innovation make most people in the developed world judge the quality of such intellectual creations in the same way that they judge the desirability of mere physical objects. Legislation is organized accordingly. Our inventions, our music, our architecture, and our literature are postulated as the authors' or even the sponsors' property and their value is determined in terms of their utility and the demand that the public develops for them.

So what happens if something totally unexpected threatens to derail the very basis of this approach, its stability and legislatively guaranteed predictability? The fantastic bloom of the Internet and digital technology has placed a multitude of challenges to our societal paradigm of who the owners of artifacts really are. Films and music, abstract enough as they are, have become further more virtual and replicable without limit. They no longer exist only in the state of hardware objects, but have metamorphosed into a series of virtual zeros and ones in the abstract depths of computer hard drives and in constant transition over telecommunications cables and satellite radio waves. With this, the public sphere has expanded disproportionately to the ability of legislation to control the sanctity of ownership of intellectual property.

But what exactly is Intellectual property in the esteem of todays law? Stringent copyrights on intellectual property are based on the precept of capitalism that society is defined and driven by the ownership and manipulation of property. The conceptual blanket of property extends over everything, including the product of one's intellectual or artistic curiosity and ability. Thus, the driving force of a man's creation becomes dominated or at least significantly motivated by a relationship of ownership. This leads to the treatment of the produced art or invention as things which downplays their role to equate them with mere objects that belong to their creators in the same way that a chair or a fork do. Still, it is obvious that the amounts of intellectual investment in the creation of a toothbrush and of the glass pyramid at the Louvre are substantially different. The problematic issue is how to find out what the minimum intellectual investment is that defines what can be addressed as a mere thing and what products of art, or scientific discovery are. Hegel, with his labyrinthine metaphysical, yet structural rationalism delves into the singularity of the object and its ability to be in-itself or be subordinate to the Will of someone else. However, no matter that he defines a sort of intellectual investment ratio, he leaves a lot of leeway for subjective interpretation.

This is where contemporary legislation presents a clear alternative to elevated hypotheses. Globally, there is a number of organizations that oversee the preservation of rights over Intellectual Property. The first line of defence is the legislation of individual countries, then there are international treaties that regulate the universal acceptance of the rules of ownership. In the United States, the ownership of Intellectual Property is guaranteed by the Constitution as being within the power of the Congress to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries (US Constitution, Art. 1, Sect. 8). This then is elaborated on in the US Codes, where copyrighting, patenting and trademarking are split in different legal domains in a publication of the House of Representatives. The body of American copyright law is in the US Code, Title 17. Patents are dealt with in Title 35, Trademark law is predominantly in Title 15.

Copyrights give the owner the exclusive right to perform, reproduce and distribute his work of art as well as any derivatives of it. It is important to note that it is required that the works must be original and in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. (17 USC, Chapter 1, section 102) The only exception lies within the Fair Use (17 USC, Chapter 1, section 107) clause, which allows for art critique, book or film reviews, and copying for educational purposes not to be considered in breach of the law. Types of works included within the Copyright Act are divided in 8 categories ranging from literary works and drama, through audiovisual and sculptural works to architecture.

Patents grant an inventor the right to exclude others from producing or using the invention or discovery he has made. Title 35 states that an invention must be novel, useful and not of an obvious nature in order to be patented. Trademarks are generally symbols, pictures or words that are claimed by sellers or manufacturers as only representing their businesses or products. These may include colour combinations, packaging, unique architectural designs and others.

In no other sphere has digital technology and especially the Internet brought more confusion than in the sphere of audio and video copyrighting. Thus, for the purposes of this essay, trademarking and to a certain degree patenting are not of interest. The copyrights over digital audio recording devices and media, as well as sound recordings and music videos are expounded in chapters 10 and 11 of the US Code Title 17. The duration of the copyright is 70 years after the author's death and may or may not be passed to his posterity. The international agreements that are in force are enacted mainly by the WTO and the WIPO and consist of a number of conventions dating as far back as the Paris Convention of 1883. It guaranteed some property rights of international companies because foreign participants refused to present at the Vienna exposition in 1873 since they were afraid that their ideas and inventions would be stolen. Since then a number of pacts have been signed and ratified in all the member states of the WIPO and the WTO, among them the Berne Convention of 1886, the WTO Agreement and the WIPO Copyright Treaty of 1996. Both organizations are based in Geneva in neutral Switzerland, a country well known for its liberal and avant-guarde policies. These international organizations have instituted legislation that is valid in a great deal of the countries of the world, yet, the enforcement of such laws is complicated by certain loopholes in the fabric of national and international legislation, as well as by the newly unleashed wonder of technology, the Internet.

Files distributed via the Internet are a perfect example of the complexity of the issues that the above organizations face. First of all, here we are dealing with replicable versions identical to the original creation of the author, that is substantially different from Hegel's situation. That means that this piece is no longer unique but is identically replicable which appears to make it a commodity-like, conveyor-created good. That is, if Beethoven's Fifth Symphony played by the London Philharmonic at 7 pm on the 20th of September 2001 can be recorded, replicated in absolutely identical copies and given to a multitude of people, this would make it not be unique anymore. It exists in time in multiple copies and can be played in exactly the same way and be heard in exactly the same way by a person in China and another one in New Zealand. Apart from the obvious question that this raises as to what art is if it can be limitlessly cloned, there is the difficulty of controlling it to the security of the author's copyrights. An entity like Napster, which by far is not the only web-based service that allows the free transmission of musical and video products, is merely an intermediary that allows individual users, that have presumably purchased audiovisual products, to share them with other people. By all means the current intellectual property legislation provides penalties for unlawful duplication of a piece of art. However, Napster and other services like that cleverly diffuse the responsibility for such acts in the anonymous user base that cannot for any practical purposes be regulated effectively because of the freedom of expression provisions most countries employ and because of immense technical difficulties. This then creates a vicious circle that leads to a lot of uncertainties.

CD Piracy that has bloomed in the transitional economies of Eastern Europe during the past 10 years and is poignantly present in many Asian countries is not an easier issue to solve. Since the issuance and distribution of actual physical carriers of the intellectual property is involved, it is clearly more plausible to see who the perpetrator is. As a result, the US and Western European states push for the enforcement of international intellectual property legislation at the threat of legal sanctions against the governments of the countries that allow such acts. A perfect example of that is the transportation of the Bulgarian CD industry to the Ukraine in the mid-1990s when Bulgaria ratified international copyright agreements. Bulgaria is believed to have been the world's third biggest manufacturer of pirate CDs in the world, coming after China and Russia. After the change in government policy Ron Synovitz of Radio Free Europe states on September 5th 1996 that "the U.S. Trade Representative's office in Washington led Bulgaria to recently create some of the most modern copyright laws in eastern and central Europe." (http://www.rferl.org/nca/special/bootleg/boot1.html). Recently the leaders in the pirate CD industry, China and Russia also adopted legislation to this effect after facing non-admittance to the WTO and international sanctions. However, the capacity of both of these countries to produce illegal CDs has been estimated at over 60 million copies and a dramatic reduction of these numbers is not likely to be seen in the near future.

It is obvious that the question of enforcing International Intellectual Property laws is the harshest one the international community faces nowadays, since the contrivance of the legislation has been mostly successful and comprehensive. Classical theories of Intellectual Property Rights have certainly served as a basis for the establishment of contemporary legislation but the incredibly swift advent of technology has made many of their precepts obsolete or non-functional. The Internet, because of its very nature as a medium for completely uninhibited transfer of information, has presented a significant problem on which future legislation will focus most poignantly. CD piracy appears to be a more manageable issue since it involves more conventional methods of sanctioning.



BIBLIOGRAPHY:


1. Hegel, W. Philosophy of Right, Knox T.M. Oxford, 1967
2. www,wto.org
3. www.wipo.org
4. www.law.cornel.edu
5. www.rferl.org/nca/special/bootleg/copyright.html