Abstract
The intellectual property law attempts continually to adapt to new developments in technology. Since the advent of the World Wide Web, digitalization and peer-to-peer sharing technologies, the copyright law fights its greatest curse – online piracy. Piracy causes millions of dollars of losses for the creative industry. Hence the right holders are determined to curb its growth. They pressure the law makers to change the law in order to support their efforts. The most recent legal protection afforded to the industry was the introduction of the anti-circumvention provisions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998 and the Copyright Directive 2001/29/EC in the U.S. and EU respectively. These new laws established the legal prohibition against the circumvention of any effective technological protections measure that blocks the access to or copying of the protected content. These laws also prohibit manufacturing and distribution of the circumvention devices which have a primary purpose to circumvent these technological measures. In the following essay the author discusses the effectiveness and applicability of the anti-circumvention rules, primarily, in the light of the next stage in the evolution of the Internet – cloud-computing. However, the work also analyses briefly these rules in the context of other issues such as enforcement of foreign judgments. With regard to the effectiveness, the author analyses persisting uncertainties in the interpretation of the anti-circumvention rules and issues related to the enforcement of foreign judgments. As to the applicability of these laws, the author examines contemporary case law on point, together with the role of contract law and technological measures and, finally, the application of fair use doctrine. Moreover, the author provides an example of a cloud-computing service which, arguably, is going to decrease the efficiency and applicability of the anti-circumvention legislation. The name of the service is Spotify and it might well be an answer to the problem of illegal peer-to-peer file sharing. In conclusion, it is submitted that the effectiveness and applicability of anti-circumvention provisions might decrease in the cloud-computing world.