300 years of copyright: have we gone full circle? On the use of technology to address limitations in distributing public performance broadcast royalties.

This paper briefly examines the concept and rationale of Copyright at the time of its inception and considers whether current legislation and, more distinctly, the administration of some of the rights specified by Copyright legislation has created a situation whereby authors of works in the music industry are being adversely affected and even exploited by such schemes thereby completing the circle by returning many authors to the point which made Copyright legislation necessary. This paper also outlines the design and implementation of a completely automatic, open and transparent blind-detection digital audio watermarking system that will enable automatic monitoring and reporting of public performance of both digital and analogue radio and television transmissions using modern computer technology in order to generate accurate royalty distributions to ‘authors’ in order to administer their rights more equitably