as advertised, or does it have some of those nasty little bugs and limitations that we have observed in so many modern "miracles"? Since we are talking high-tech, another natural question should emerge: can PictureMarc be "hacked" by hostile programmers? Experience should make us very cautious at least; few pieces of electronic technology are either bug-free or bulletproof, and the ITAA itself, as they remark in their introduction to their list of copyright protection products, unequivocally refuses to "make any claims as to the validity of the claims made by the providers of these technologies. All information provided is summarized and condensed from company press releases and responses to requests for information. . . . As with most emerging technologies, there is a varying degree of protection and efficiency among technologies available for copyright protection." But let us assume, with supreme optimism, that all of Digimarc's claims about its product are correct, and that the claims will remain true indefinitely. What, in fact, do we have? Even if PictureMarc lets us keep track of the origin and legal ownership of an image, firmly and forever, we still find nothing in Digimarc's description of it that implies some physical restriction on the ability of people to make copies and send them racing around the world. And this is precisely where some of the most important copyright questions lie. Intellectual property, like other forms of property, is subject to the laws of supply and demand; it is the electronic creation of a theoretically unlimited supply that is the economic problem for authors and publishers. PictureMarc may help resolve cases of theft, in which someone is trying to falsely claim authorship of an image in order to try to make money from it illegitimately; but a profit-motivated thief, just as much as a legitimate owner, wants to maintain the value of the merchandise he has stolen, or else he can make no money either....
