Law and New Technology: The Virtues of Muddling Through

The Digital Dilemma: Intellectual Property in the Information Age. By the Committee on Intellectual Property Rights and the Emerging Information Infrastructure, Computer Sciences and Telecommunications Board, Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications, National Research Council. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2000. Pp.

340. In 1986, before the Internet became a household word, the federal Office of Technology Assessment warned that "new information and communications technologies available today are challenging the intellectual property system in ways that may only be resolvable with substantial changes in the system or with new mechanisms to allocate both rights and rewards." The nascent technologies at issue then seem prosaic today: videocassette recorders, two-way interactive cable, fiber optic communications, and satellite television