Contractual and technological approaches for protecting digital works: their relationship with copyright limitations

To deal with the new circumstances arising in the digital environment, with its particular conditions for the access, distribution and use of intellectual works, three distinct approaches exist: legal (copyright laws are modified to adapt them to the new context), technological (systems designed to control access and use of works), and contractual (through licenses to regulate the conditions of use of the works). The joint use of technological measures and licenses, together with the laws that protect both, are seriously endangering the effectiveness of the limitations to copyright set forth by law to benefit libraries, their users and citizens in general. This represents a strong privatisation of access to information. Using as a point of reference the laws of countries that are on the front lines of this terrain – the USA, the European Union and Australia – some problems created by the new forms of protection of intellectual works are examined.