The traditional business of publishing is an expensive and slow moving process. Once a book is written it then has to be printed and distributed. The publishers will have to guess at the book's popularity and estimate how many copies might be sold. If they guess wrong and the book doesn't sell then the unsold copies will have to be pulped. This all costs considerable sums of money and the process takes a long time.
In contrast, publishing material on the Internet is much cheaper and faster. A book or article can be placed on the Web without the need for expensive printing, it can be accessed from around the globe without any of the distribution costs associated with paper manuscripts. In fields where the speed of reporting is vital - such as physics - the Internet has taken over from more traditional journals as the forum in which new discoveries and theories are aired. In view of these advantages it is not surprising that many publishers, particularly newspapers, have begun publishing material on the Internet.
However, although online publishing is technically straightforward it creates major legal complications - particularly with copyright law. The object of the law of copyright, as contained in the 1963 Irish Copyright Act, is to encourage the production of works of literature, music and other material. It does this by giving the author of a work the power to determine how his or her work is reproduced, published, performed, broadcast or adapted.
Putting a work on the Internet would count as both reproducing and publishing the work, so it should only be done with the author's consent. If an author has consented to having his material published only in one medium, such as a newspaper, consent must be obtained before his or her material is published on the Internet.
If this consent is not obtained initially, it must be received prior to publication on the Internet, and getting this consent may not be cheap. Peggy Lee sang the music for the Disney film The Lady And The Tramp back in the 1950s and she was paid a once-off fee.
In the 1980s the film became a huge hit on video and Peggy Lee sued, claiming that although she had given up her rights to royalties in respect of the film she had not given up her rights to royalties for videos (since they had not been invented at the time). She was successful and the Californian courts awarded her a considerable amount of money.
In the same fashion authors who agreed to allow a work to be published in a newspaper may argue that republishing that work on the Internet is a new publication and should entail a new fee.
Even if authors have given up all their rights over a work, they may argue that this was only done in respect of publication in the particular country concerned. Since the Internet is a global network a new contract may need to be negotiated allowing for global publication, before online publication is allowed.
A major problem with the Internet is that once a literary work or other material is reduced to digital form it can be manipulated and twisted in a variety of ways. The most simple is that of plagiarism.
Once an article is published on the Internet it may be downloaded by anyone. If that person needs material for a college or school essay or perhaps for an article of their own they can simply change the name of the author and submit it as their own work.
Of course they could do this with an article in a conventional journal, but the burden of retyping the work created some deterrent and the far smaller selection of such journals available (in comparison with the almost limitless variety of material available on the Internet) greatly increases the chances of getting caught.
The dangers of plagiarism have made many authors wary of publishing material on the Internet, particularly as many Internet users have the bizarre idea that if an author allows a work to be published on the Internet once, then he or she consents to that work being republished all over the Internet and elsewhere.
Merely because it is technically possible to copy a work thousands of times does not make it legal. More sophisticated manipulations may involve combining a work with pictures or music to produce a new package which may create a totally different impression to that of the original. This causes concerns for authors worried about the integrity of their works and further reduces their enthusiasm for allowing the publication of their works on the Internet.
Denis Kelleher is co-author with Karen Murray of Information Technology Law In Ireland, recently published by Butterworths.