DIGITIZED STORAGE OF LIBRARY AND OTHER INFORMATION RESOURCES ON THE INTERNET: IMPLICATIONS FOR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PROTECTION

olumide babatope longe mr, university of ibadan, ibadan nigeria
chiemeke stella c DR, university of benin, benin city, nigeria
adefolake adunni longe Mrs, Lead City university, Ibadan, Nigeria

Document Type Article

The Reseachers will welcome rejoinders to this paper

Abstract

Borrowing a Book or a Compact disk containing relevant information from a local library would seem to be one of the most routine, and uncomplicated acts in modern civic life. A world of information is available with little effort and almost at no cost to the user. Such access to information has played a central role in education and social life from time immemorial. Yet the very possibility of borrowing a book, whether from a library or a friend, depends on a number of subtle, surprisingly complex, and at times conflicting elements of law, public policy, economics, and technology; elements that must be kept in relative balance in the light of today’s accelerating transformation of information into digital form. Access to resource materials in an age where libraries are getting computerized, digitized and virtual is obviously without limits. Unfortunately, this ease of access also enables unauthorized usage of resource materials particularly by pirates who deprive copyright owners the right benefits for their labour. This paper reviews the impact of changing technology on libraries and other information resources on the internet and concludes that deliberate effort must be made to beef up intellectual property law in the light of current storage innovations in order to cater for the subtleties introduced by the impact of modern storage technology.