1 Copyright law as a matter of (inter)national security? – The attempt to securitise commercial infringement and its spillover onto individual liability Farrand, Benjamin & Carrapico, Helena 1 Introductory remarks From a popular perspective, 'intellectual property' has gone from being, until recently, a niche area of dry legal practice to a hotly contested mainstream subject. Aside from topical debates such as the role and ethics of pharmaceutical companies and issues of generic drug accessibility in developing nations, arguably the most publicised topic of discussion relates to copyright, and its exploitation in the digital economy. This debate is highly emotive and divisive, resulting in heated arguments between those who wish to further strengthen copyright law and those that wish to see it relaxed, with neither party conceding a common ground. Based on on-going legal developments in the field of copyright, it would appear that proponents of the former viewpoint have the upper hand. International, European and even national levels are seeing increases in intellectual property protection measures, despite numerous academics frequently criticising these moves 2 . Intellectual property law has traditionally been considered as part of civil law, regulating the relationship between private parties and the rights and penalties to be applied in cases of infringement of copyright. The legal protection given by copyright has intended to rectify a “market failure” by providing incentives that encourage the production and dissemination of works...'(providing) a legal means by which those who invest time and labour in producing...goods can be confident that they will not only be able to recoup that investment, but also reap a profit proportional to the popularity of their work 3 '. Until relatively recent legal developments, copyright protection has not been considered an area requiring criminal law regulation. Why is it, then, that copyright appears to be moving inextricably in the direction of stronger and broader protection? Why are different concepts such as counterfeiting and copyright infringement being inextricably linked and the terms used interchangeably? Why is the act of infringement of copyright now being associated with serious 1 Benjamin Farrand is a Doctoral Researcher at the European University Institute, in Florence, and Helena Carrapico is a post- Doctoral Researcher at the Institute for European Integration Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The authors would like to express their gratitude to Zdenek Kudrna, Malgorzata Staniaszek, Florian Trauner and Guilherme Vasconcelos Vilaça for their support, insight and review of the current article. They would equally like to thank the anonymous reviewer for his/ her comments. 2 See, for example, Editorial, 'Creativity Stifled? A joint academic statement on the proposed copyright term extension for sound recordings' [2008] EIPR 30(9) 341, in which several leading academics in the field of IP heavily criticised plans for a proposal to further extend the copyright on sound recordings 3 Bently, L. and Sherman. B. 'Intellectual Property Law', 6 th Ed, Oxford University Publishing (2004) at p.35.