Does copyright have a chance? … The economic pressures and even some of the social pressures are such that it may not. Maybe the whole nature of intellectual property has to be reexamined.
Predictor: Hoffman, Lance
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for The Toronto Sun, Scott Magnish talks with Lance Hoffman about law on the Internet. Magnish writes: ”The concept of ‘copyrighting’ could be lost on the information highway as the world moves closer to the free flow of information, U.S. experts said. ‘It’s up in the air what’s going to happen,’ said Dr. Lance Hoffman, an investigator for a National Science Foundation project on security and privacy. ‘We don’t really have a regime to enforce (copyright) law globally. We don’t know what’s going to happen.’ … Ultimately, he said, the goal is to ‘get some sort of road markers on the information superhighway so that we can civilize cyberspace, and prevent it from becoming an electronic Dodge City.’ He said current copyright laws have worked because they applied to a physical world. In the electronic realm of cyberspace, current legislation is unenforceable. ‘Does copyright have a chance?’ Hoffman asked rhetorically. ‘I’m increasingly leery of the pressure. The economic pressures and even some of the social pressures are such that it may not. Maybe the whole nature of intellectual property has to be reexamined.'”
Biography:Lance Hoffman, a professor at George Washington University, was a security expert and the author of the 1994 National Science Foundation paper “Civilizing Cyberspace: Priority Policy Issues in a National Information Infrastructure” in addition to many other research pieces in the 1990s. He wrote the book “Rogue Programs: Viruses, Worms and Trojan Horses” (Van Nostrand Rheinhold, 1990). (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Controversial Issues
Subtopic: Copyright/Intellectual Property/Plagiarism
Name of publication: Toronto Sun
Title, headline, chapter name: Lawless Cyber Frontier
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=837d587206e09d54f745f0f4be4953d8&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLbVlb-lSlzV&_md5=143f5ec47b6505e47d6e4119fdff9c7a
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Johnson, Kathleen