How has the Internet increased both the importance and the difficulty of protecting intellectual property?

Answer 1

In the past, if you wanted to read something you most often had to buy a book, magazine or newspaper, and if you wanted to hear certain music you had to buy a record or tape or a concert ticket or listen to commercial radio. The only exception back then was to borrow what you wanted from a friend or from a library. The creators of the works received payments from the publishers and record labels from the money they received through sales and through deals with radio stations, who in turn made deals with their advertisers. The development of digital media made it possible to convert those written or recorded works into a series of 1's and 0's. Suddenly it became possible to possess a great story without possessing a book, or to possess an artist's music without possessing a CD. People who in the past would not purchase a bootleg copy of an album found it harder to resist the temptation to obtain pirated digital music. Artists deserve to be paid for their creations, but the ability to transfer someone's works without a physical medium has made it virtually impossible to assure that every recipient has paid for his/her copy.