Internet was first developed to serve the needs of military purposes, particularly to enable a very proficient and precise communication in every imaginable event, nuclear war included. This demanding project required a very high degree of decentralisation, which would make the Internet almost incapable of being destroyed. That resulted in diminishment or virtually annihilation of basically all the effective control mechanisms.
 
It is undisputed that national laws, which can be enforced solely within the borders of a sovereign state, are, not in itself, sufficient. Therefore, any attempt to regulate it would require a need for uniformity
on a global level, something which, at this stage in history and owing to escalating legal and
cultural differences, seems almost hopeless.
The main purpose of this essay is to highlight some of the above mentioned issues, particularly with respect to
-copyright and the homepage
-the distribution of software
-music

1.Copyright and the homepage
A homepage, as it is a result of intellectual work, is naturally under the protection of various copyright laws as well as other relevant regulations. However, the fact that every homepage has it source code clearly and distinctly perceptible makes it easy to download and, with some minor adjustments, publish it as if it was a consequence of one's own intellect and later even sell it . The original author is
of course excluded from this process and receives absolutely no compensation. It is highly unlikely for the author, to discover such actions and even if he decides go to court, that could be a potentially very
expensive decision. Otherwise, he is reduced to a very ungratifying role of a spectator without any effective safeguard to protect his legally recognised interests. This issue is very important, as the
market for homepage designers is growing rapidly.

2. Distribution of software
It is a prevailing opinion that software fall into three categories.
First, there is the so called freeware, the usage of which requires no payment, but can also not be the subject of trade. However, as this softwares are in most cases created by lone computer enthusiasts, they
are frequently subjected to illegal abuses. In most cases they do not poses enough financial strength
to hire expensive law corporations to look after their benefits.
The second category is denoted as shareware, a category that has many variations. The most common usage involves an ability, to be used only for a definite period of time ( something which is frequently disobeyed ) and has often only limited capabilities if compared to the full version. In order to retain the all capabilities, the user is commonly required to transfer a certain amount of money to receive a key that unlocks all of the software's functions. However, some users make use of the opportunity to exchange keys and even huge database for all sorts of keys have been established.
The third category is commonly refered to as a full version, which can be downloaded, after the
payment via credit cards.

3. Music
It was not until recently that illegal distribution of music has become a very serious issue, as CD quality recordings were taking too much space, to be interesting for downloading. But compression technology now enables that music titles in CD quality take only 3 to 6 Mb of space and can be downloaded in about 10 minutes with a good Internet connection. With the widespread growing of such actions being seemingly impossibly to conquer, legitimate companies are facing potentially a very serious threat.

To sum up, the biggest problem is represented by the inability to detect a copyright infringer, as he can usually conceal his identity. But even if by a lucky break we can reveal it, it is only to discover
that he is often situated on a different hemisphere, meaning that a possibility of successful actions are virtually annulled.

Avtor: Miroslav Ekart