Advances in technology continue to make worldwide distribution simpler and faster, by transporting audiences to the source of the art or by bringing the art to local audiences. Technology also serves to create reprductions of artwork for those who would otherwise not experience the originals. As technology improves reproductions by making them both cheaper to create and more similar to the originals, the reproductions take on a life of their own. In an artistic sense, reproductions may spin off as entirely new media (as we have seen from theatre to film). In a material sense, as resproductions become increasingly digital, they lose their tangibility and with it, their ability to be properly regulated.
The question then arises: what are the possible modes of protection for artists who deserve to benefit from their efforts? There are three possible sources of protection for artists:
As a side note, the limits of technology present an interesting ethical dilemma for the computer scientist. While a well-meaning programmer may offer hopeful promises of fool-proof security and unbeatable encryption to potential clients, such bold attestations may prove tragic. Schneider adds, "Software manufacturers don't have to produce a quality product because there is no liability if they don't. And the effect of this for security products is that manufacturers don't have to produce products that are actually secure, because no one can sue them if they make a bunch of false claims of security. (Schneider)"
Current copyright law is scaled to punish large-scale offenders. Financially, it has never made sense to sue individuals guilty of private theft, because the cost could never outweigh the fines. Most companies only sue in instances where sizeable business transactions present major competition to the rightful owner. Digital technology presents a problem in that it magnifies the effects of many individuals. While large-scale offenders may be sparce, the financial impact of millions of individuals will slowly take its toll as a great conglomerate copyright offender. The legal logistics of such policing (particularly across international borders) are far too overwhelming to provide realistic protection to artists in the near future.
Without the aid of technology or government, artists in this new age of digitized art work are going to have to rely more than ever on the individual ethics of individuals to protect their ownership rights. Artists and the people who distribute their work are going to have to find ways to promote the ethical use of their creative work to avoid rampant piracy since it seems that other methods of prevention currently fall short when it comes to the protection of the artist's creative work. In order to accomplish this, artists need to understand exactly what individuals want out of their experience of the art and what the individual consumer of art is thinking when they choose to purchase or steal a work of art.
One of the biggest reasons that stealing digitized art is so guilt-free for the consumer is that stealing a computer file seems very far removed from the theft of a tangible object. It feels much more ethically reprehensible to steal a book from a bookstore than it does to download a pirated e-book, because the former involves an actual physical object while the latter simply feels like making a copy of a legitimate file on a computer. There is no artist or shopkeeper whom the consumer can see being directly affected by their actions, and so it is easier from an ethical standpoint to justify the theft than it otherwise would be. Only with increased public awareness of the damage this theft does to the artist can this problem be addressed, as is beginning to happen with Napster copyright legal case.
Another way the consumer can try to justify their theft of the artwork is that often times the digitized versions of the art are of a lower quality than their more "real" counterparts. Many individuals wonder why they should pay for an inferior version of art that they probably would not buy to begin with in the first place. What people fail to realize is that this is not a valid justification for their theft, and it still does a great deal of damage to the artist, particularly if this substandard replacement reduces the likelihood of someone buying the higher quality version. Once again, this line of reasoning results mainly out of people's inexperience with the new paradigm of digital art, and public awareness may be the best solution to this problem.
Finally, in many cases there is not a good legitimate way for users to obtain the digital version of the artwork they wish to possess, and consequently they resort to theft to obtain it. People need a means to act responsibly if they are expected to do so. This is one of the problems that we currently see in the music industry with MP3's. There is no good model for users to legally obtain MP3's, and as a result piracy is a serious problem. In instances where there are legitimate avenues for people to obtain digital art, such as Corbis, people seem to behave rather responsibly and ethically. This could be a good omen for other art forms when they reach the level of digital distribution maturity that Corbis provides its users.