Formalities in the digital era: an obstacle or opportunity?

This paper, which was presented at the 2009 ALAI conference in London, examines the possible reintroduction of copyright formalities against the background of the challenges that copyright law faces in the digital era. It does so by contrasting the current calls for reintroducing formalities with the legal-historical reasons for their abolition. The paper concludes that, while, in the pre-digital era, the objections against copyright formalities were real, in the light of the changes caused by the advent of digital technologies, there is now sufficient reason to reconsider subjecting copyright to formalities.