Technology has vastly changed the way entertainment and the arts are viewed and distributed.  A simple, ubiquitous internet connection provides access to more images, audio, and video files than one could have imagined even twenty years ago.  While the array of media available online is staggering, a number of megacorporations have sought to conglomerate those entertainment outlets, so that more and more media will ultimately emanate from fewer and fewer megamedia corporations.  For example, the Sony Corporation, long known as a manufacturer of electronics, has made inroads into every imaginable corner of the entertainment industry.  Sony owns a wide array of affiliated companies, including the remains of one-time film giants Columbia, MGM, and UA, as well as dozens of record labels in 47 countries, under the umbrella of Sony Music.  AOL Time Warner is another huge conglomerate, purveying online media, print publications, television broadcasts, and film.  Corporations like Sony and AOL Time Warner provide a variety of media through a variety of methods, but these companies are clearly working toward industry dominance, and working successfully.  Despite the democratizing effect of the internet, promotion and production dominance will likely increase for these Goliaths.

In order to extend their reach and their dominance, companies like Sony and AOL Time Warner must adapt to the new media available, and the inclination of users to pay only when they must.  Rampant audio and video copying, or "piracy" as some term it, has led these entertainment conglomerates to use Digital Rights Management (DRM), technologies intended to provide access control to digital content providers, in an effort to limit usage and sharing of that content.  The DRM utilized by AOL Time Warner is, they claim, an attempt to protect the corporation's online intellectual property while continuing to provide media to consumers.  Apple, Inc. has produced FairPlay, a DRM used with iTunes.  Only recently has iTunes created an option that allows music to be purchased without DRM. Digital rights management tools allows companies like Apple, Sony, and AOL Time Warner to protect their intellectual property assets in an industry threatened, or so they claim, by an epidemic of file sharing.

These companies try to protect their products from copyright violation.  Because they operate on a global scale, they use protection tools that allow them to control how the media is viewed and how susceptible it is to manipulation.  Challenges arise, however, for corporations that deal with intellectual property in a variety of countries.  Watchdog organizations that once existed only in the U.S. are coming together to help enforce copyright laws worldwide, further protecting intellectual property online.