Put simply, the term "digital copyright" will be used on this site to refer to issues of copyright as they pertain to digital environments. The most important digital framework discussed here is the World Wide Web.

In all the bright confusion of the Information Age, where rules seem more like suggestions than obligations, the idea of cultural ownership is undergoing an incredible shift. Borrowing, using, and inventing have overlapping definitions in the digital environment, and standard measures for "protection" of creative work no longer seem viable (Barlow, 1994).

In 1994, John Perry Barlow wrote an article for Wired Magazine that described and projected the changing shape of information on the Internet. His article, "The Economy of Ideas," argues that "articles of commerce" such as copyright "will inevitably threaten freedom of speech" when they start to resemble freedom of speech (Barlow, 1994). In this context, investing unusual power in a law of commerce becomes at best a precarious exercise.

Although inventions, commercial associations, and the expression of ideas find wide dissemination online, they are also widely subject to appropriation. It is at this crucial point that the worlds of digital copyright and Indigenous culture intersect.