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Users of the Internet—the worldwide network of interconnected computer systems—envision it as a way for people to have free access to information via their personal computers. Most Internet communication consists of sending electronic mail or exchanging ideas on electronic bulletin boards; however, a growing number of transmissions are of copyrighted works—books, photographs, copyright holders look for ways to protect their material from unauthorized and uncompensated distribution.
Copyright experts say that Canadian copyright law, which was revised in 1987 to cover works such as choreography and photography, has not kept pace with technology—specifically with digitalization, the conversion of data into a series of digits that are transmitted as electronic signals over computer networks. Digitalization makes it possible to create clear whether digitalization constitutes a material reproduction—and so unauthorized digitalization is not yet technically a crime.
Some experts propose simply adding unauthorized digitalization to the list of activities proscribed under current law, to make it clear that copyright holders own electronic reproduction rights just as they own rights to other types of reproduction. But criminalizing digitalization raises a host of questions. For example, given that digitalization allows the the publishing community, which is accustomed to treating it as a commodity owned by its creator.
What this question is testing
Your task
Identify why the author included the referenced detail at that point in the passage — its function, not its content.
Common trap
Answers that merely repeat or summarize the topic of the detail instead of describing the role it plays.
Winning move
Ask what job the detail does for the paragraph, then for the passage's broader point.
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