The paper explores the mechanisms that led to the current crisis of copyright law in the digital era by applying the concept of law as an autopoietic system. It analyses how copyright law has evolved over the years, and how - every time a new technology has come to disrupt the system - the law has evolved to try and preserve the traditional status quo. Today, however, in order to benefit from the new opportunities offered by digital technologies, copyright law must be radically reformed to encourage - rather than discourage - the dissemination of online works. This might require a shift from a system based on the concept of reproduction (copy-right) to a system based on the reutilization of works (reuse-right).