Research Reports

The article explores the mechanisms that led to the current crisis of copyright law in the digital environment (understood as its inability to regulate social dynamics as regards the production, dissemination and access to creative works) by applying the concept of law as an autopoietic system. The article contends that, for copyright law to successfully regulate the production, dissemination and access to cultural works, it must be radically reformed in light of the intrinsic logic and needs of all constitutive systems of modern society, without favouring those of the economic and political systems over those of the creative system. It concludes that society (as a whole) might only benefit from the new opportunities offered by digital technologies if copyright law properly adapts to the digital era by embracing—rather than opposing—the specificities of the digital world.