With a few keystrokes, anyone can reproduce near-perfect copies of digitized works and deliver them to hundreds of people. The digitized process is quicker and easier, and the copies are better. Artists and publishers must depend on security measures such as scrambling and encryption to protect their works from pirates who illegally copy and sell them. Stories are rampant of literature and music being pirated and sold over the Internet for pennies, robbing authors of royalties. The U.S. recording industry has a large financial stake in combating this practice and is mounting a public information campaign to educate the public.
Software is another weak point in intellectual property protection.
Because the Internet is an international arena, copyright protection is an international issue. To address potentially massive international piracy, the World Intellectual Property Organization, representing the international copyright community, began treaty deliberations in the early 1990s. Two treaties, adopted in 1996, are designed to extend digital copyright protections internationally to creative works. The U.S. Senate approved treaty implementation legislation in May 1998 and the House of Representatives approved it in October. The legislation seeks to protect literary and artistic works distributed over the Internet from unauthorized copying and distribution.