In the Digital Realm

As digital processing and storage of all media become the primary methods for handling intellectual property, the benefit and effectiveness of such copy-restriction will increase, and the losses incurred from transferring to and from the analog realm will probably come to be viewed as less and less acceptable.

Operating System Copy-Restriction

In the digital realm, all media are represented as encoded numerical sequences. It is easy, usually necessary, and already in universal practice, to add peripheral information to the data code (such as time-of-day, file names, etc.). It is therefore comparatively simple to implement a copy-restriction program that becomes an inherent part of any intellectual property encoded into the digital realm. Such a program could restrict the copying of this data.

The advantage of such a system is that it involves no hardware, and is therefore comparatively inexpensive. Further, it is flexible, and can be programmed to permit "fair use" copying and reversion to public domain.
Another advantage is that such copy-restriction can be universal; in the digital realm, such programs are an inherent part of the operating system and operate equally well with all media.

A disadvantage is that such systems exist only in the digital realm. Conversion of the intellectual property into the analog realm strips away the peripheral digital data, including any copy-restriction protocol. Reconversion to the digital realm and subsequent re-recording causes little degradation in the quality of the intellectual property itself.

Operating System Provenance Documentation

Another possibility in the digital realm has to do with provenance. It is easily possible, although not now done, to include with intellectual property in the digital realm its complete history, including source and all subsequent recording history. This provenance could be used to directly prove violation of copyright through documentation of "audit trails" of recording history, including time, date and identification of all machines used to make all copies from and to this recording, including analog generations.

Further, sales/transfers of such recordings could also be documented as a part of the permanent history of an artifact.