Intellectual Property Rights

Intellectual property rights intersect with surveillance due to data mining and privacy concerns. Much of the dataveillance that characterizes commercial tracking of behavior (online and off-line) is monetized through the creation of analytic products held as copyright by the firm. Information brokers that place data mining at the center of their business model rely on strong copyright protection to monetize analytic products. Search algorithms and software developed for more effective or efficient data mining are typically held as proprietary, leaving the exact methods of analysis outside public knowledge. Enforcing intellectual property rights on entertainment media and software fuels debates over surveillance and monitoring of online file-sharing networks. This entry reviews four general types of intellectual property and how monitoring it affects individuals and corporations. It ...