9. How can I successfully navigate these thorny, complex issues of copyright and ownership?

I’d hire an attorney. I think it’s too complicated for somebody without experience to do it. Each individual project has its own set of parameters depending on what you own, what you don’t own, what you need to license, and what you need to license it for. Even the art of hiring someone to create things is an issue, whether it’s a work made for hire or not. The issue of ownership is tremendous.

I firmly believe that in the cyberworld of today, if you’re not an attorney versed in cyberlaw or cyber-entertainment law, that you’re going to have a problem doing it yourself, and I would not recommend it. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It’s not what you know that’s going to hurt you. It’s what you don’t know.

10. What changes might there be in the future, especially as the world becomes a smaller place?
The world is coming to be a closer place as a result of the sharing of information over the internet. We have to think of our neighbors more when we fashion U.S. law, and they have to think more about us as well. Whether we’ll have a uniform act, I don’t know, but we are getting very close now to some general concepts that are true in a majority of the countries, and that’s the future because the internet truly is global. There are some universal truths that exist in copyright law. I do believe, though, that it’s only going to get better.