In cyberworld, intellectual property rights and the right to informational self determination have become two realities in tension. Nevertheless, they are two main concerns of the e-commerce stakeholders. From the industry point of view, new digital technologies, left unregulated, may allow a free flow of information and unauthorized access to contents both from consumers or competitors; from the consumers’ perspective, security and privacy concerns are the major barriers to contracting on-line. The goal of the present chapter is to understand the relationship between anti-piracy oriented private electronic surveillance and consumers’ privacy. If, on the one hand, the enforcement of intellectual property is a laudable activity – since the recognition of economic exclusive rights is an incentive to artistic or scientific creation and the protection of the investments is an ICT industry’s legitimate interest –, on the other hand, the individual’s privacy sphere is one of the most important values and personal freedoms that law, including intellectual property law, must preserve.
Economic issues of intellectual property rights and pricing for digital information on computer networks