Diritto d'Autore e Proprietà Digitale

This thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of the conflict recently emerged between two entities: the first one, copyright, and the second one, the ownership of digital products incorporating works of authorship. In the digital world, corpora mechanica are as non-rivalrous and non-excludable as the corpus mysticum they incorporate and, thus, the development of ICTs has exponentially increased the threat of piracy. As consequence, legislators have intensified the protection provided by copyright law, and copyright owners have adopted new contractual and technological methods in order to defend themselves. The combination of the conducts of these actors is leading to an overprotection of copyright owners: this phenomenon is not only ineffective in actually preventing the violations rocketing over the Internet, but it is also seriously attempting digital property. The latter one, in fact, is so injured by the new regimes and tools applied, that copyright is evolving in a sort of accessright. Even though some turnarounds have lately been made ¿ especially by the courts ¿, they are far too circumscribed to state if this harmful trend is going to flag.