Our world is changing.  Every day, new technologies bring people and ideas together in new ways.  This unmitigated flow has created new issues in the areas of intellectual property and copyright.  This accelerated exchange of thought, innovation, and media has brought some people together to create in new ways, and others to find new means of protecting their creations.  Tension between the collaboration of creators and the collaboration of those bent on protecting their creations will certainly shape how copyright and copyright violation is managed throughout the world in years to come.

With the technology now available, artists, musicians, filmmakers, authors, and other creators have the opportunity to self-publish online and create an immediate international audience for their work.  Professional and amateur artists share access to the same venues for introducing their work to the public. Individuals who make their living in the creative arts now know the economic power of immediate access to a limitless consumer group.  Creators have the opportunity to exchange ideas and collaborate with individuals around the globe.  Artists are no longer limited by the material at hand, or the collaborators in their geographical vicinity.   

Using the web to display and sell one’s intellectual property is not without risk, however.  Online media is easily reproduced and manipulated.  The intellectual property shared and sold on the internet is easy to manipulate, as reproduction poses no cost to the reproducer.  If one were to steal the intellectual property of an automobile design, there would be significant cost involved in producing the car.  In the fields of audio and video, however, the technology readily available today makes reproducing and manipulating that sort of intellectual property relatively easy and free of cost.  In some circumstances, the finished creative product of one individual is the raw materials for the creative work of another.  The ease of appropriation, manipulation, and reconstitution makes it very difficult for the original artist to protect either the work as it was intended, or the financial revenues the work may generate.