It has always been a challenging task to uphold the right balance on conflicting interest of a copyrights owner and the public especially when it comes to private copying. According to Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA), creators have several exclusive rights they can exercise to restrict others from using their work. These include, amongst others, the reproduction right. This means that, in principle, any act of copying a protected work, including for example saving a copy of a song to an external hard drive, needs to be authorised by the rights holder. However, UK Copyright Law contains a ‘private copying’ exception which takes away the need to obtain such permission.
This situation can be seen in the case, Musicians’ Union (MU), the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors and others (BASCA) v Secretary of State for Business Innovation & Skills (2015), where a new exception to copyright that has been introduced recently in UK, known as The Copyright and Rights in Performances (Personal Copies for Private Use) Regulations 2014 that implemented the Article 5 of Directive 2001/29/EC, however omitting the compensation part has been challenge for a judicial review. The application was on the basis that the new private copying act does not include a method for fairly compensating rights holders for the act of private copying as part of the new regime, in line with Directive 2001/29/EC, art 5(2)(b) .
This essay will analyse the case and the possible outcome and impact of the decision of the case especially under copyright exception itself.
Background
To understand the issues and how the problems arise, it is necessary to understand the historical events and the fundamentals that lead t...
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...issuing, renting and lending copies to the public.
Copyright grants an automatic right to a creator of an “original” work; be it an individual or company. “Original” is usually associated with something new or not done before; it is in a primary type or form, from which others are derived. Copyright only provides protection to something original to the author. Thus, “the sine qua non of copyright is originality. Interpretation of originality is related to the independent creation rather than the idea behind the creation. Unlike patent, a copyright is not a monopoly but rather; it is a right of protection against copying. Thus, works that expresses an idea may be protected but not the idea behind it as per the case of Mazer v Stein . This is also stipulated in Article 9(2) of Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement (TRIPS).
...nd a strong message that the illegal distribution of copyrighted works has consequences, but if individuals are willing to step forward on their own, we want to go the extra step and extend this option" (RIAA 1).
This paper covers two law cases on copyright infringement. The first one is Jacobus Rentmeester v. Nike, Inc., a case in which Nike was accused of infringing the copyright of a photo by creating a similar photo and logo. The focus is on how the court determines the breadth of copyright protection and the assessment of substantial similarity. The second case is Oracle America, Inc. v. Google Inc., a case in which Google was accused of infringing the copyright of Java codes. The highlights are the discussion on copyrightability and fair-use defense. The paper ends with some concluding remarks on the dilemma courts face when seeking a balance between copyright protection and freedom of creation / industrial development.
“Copyright is a fundamental right of ownership and protection common to all of the arts” (O’Hara & Beard, 2006, p. 8). “It is a form of intellectual Property (IP)” and it gives the owner exclusive rights to the copyright (O’Hara & Beard, 2006, p. 11).
It is not unusual to find hostile response of audio-visual industry against a new copying technology. Every time when a new copying technology was invented and introduced into the market, the industry responded argued that the new technology would cause significant damage to them by promoting piracy; It was true with the cases of Xerox, audio tape recorder, video tape recorder, compact disc (CD), and finally with the online file sharing through Peer-to-Peer (P2P) service. Usually, introduction of new copying technology led to series of legal disputes just like what we are witnessing in the current case of the Record Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) lawsuits against KaZaA and its individual members. Quite contrary to the industry’s usual arguments, however, new technologies eventually have proved additional revenues of profit for them so far. (Bettig, 1996)
This case study will examine the moral issues of intellectual property rights and the effects they have on society. There are many varying stances on the subject of intellectual property, with people opposing either or both of intellectual property ownership and creative commons for various reasons. Mandatory copyrighting and patenting of inventions and published works has the potential to majorly restrict advancements in science and culture.
When Tim Berners-Lee created the Internet as a non-proprietor, not-for-profit information conduit, he could not have predicted how controversial digitized intellectual property would become. Prior to the Internet, intellectual property was a fairly straightforward issue. It was protected with copyright, trademark, and patent legislations, which granted exclusive rights to owners. Violations were not as abundant because distribution was constrained by time and space. Moreover, violators were identifiable because anonymity was difficult to achieve. In today's "global village" however, digital information such as books, music, software and art can be instantly shared between two anonymous users, without any fee to the creator. Legislation is much more difficult to enforce.
Copyright exists to ensure the owners of intellectual property secure a fair return on their work because existing contract law doesn’t offer enough protection. The legal rule of ‘privity of contract ‘ stipulates that a contract existing between two parties cannot be applied to a third party (Law Reform Commission, 2008), therefore the third party would be able to exploit the works wi...
Over the past decade the societal view of creative society has greatly changed due to advances in computer technology and the Internet. In 1995, aware of the beginning of this change, two authors wrote articles in Wired Magazine expressing diametrically opposed views on how this technological change would take form, and how it would affect copyright law. In the article "The Emperor's Clothes Still Fit Just Fine" Lance Rose hypothesized that the criminal nature of copyright infringement would prevent it from developing into a socially acceptable practice. Thus, he wrote, we would not need to revise copyright law to prevent copyright infringement. In another article, Entitled "Intellectual Value", Esther Dyson presented a completely different view of the copyright issue. She based many her arguments on the belief that mainstream copyright infringement would proliferate in the following years, causing a radical revision of American ideas and laws towards intellectual property. What has happened since then? Who was right? This paper analyzes the situation then and now, with the knowledge that these trends are still in a state of transformation. As new software and hardware innovations make it easier to create, copy, alter, and disseminate original digital content, this discussion will be come even more critical.
Copyright laws are used to protect the unauthorized access of information by people that may not have legal permission to access such data. Use of these laws on written materials has proven effective over a long time, but the use of these laws on web content is ineffective. Copyright laws put a lot of limitation when used on content on the web. Use of copyright laws on web content limits quality and general freedom of those willing to use the information. This paper, therefore, provides arguments as to why copyright right laws should not be applied on the web due.
In any of these cases, the creator is to make however many sensible strides towards finding the Copyright holder as could be expected under the circumstances. Consent to utilize sound can be much all the more overpowering. "To acquire the rights to a solitary tune, the mixed media engineer would need to get rights from the music distributer (the proprietor of the Copyright in the 'musical organization') and the record organization (the proprietor of the Copyright in the 'sound recording') and a discharge from the artists.3: Insurance organizations who protect programming makers, mixed media distributers and designers are hesitant of programming and source code being counterfeited, duplicated and reused to different organizations. Transitory contractual representatives are being utilized enormously as a part of the interactive media and programming commercial ventures where activities are invoked persistently. These makeshift developers and fashioners have replicated bits of code at an ex-head honcho's and reuse that parcel of code in a hurry to "proficiently" finish a task for a present manager. Mixed media components, programming and codes, (for example, HTML) on the Internet are effectively replicated and repeated without legitimate clearances being acquired. Insurance agencies discover themselves custom-customizing mixed media risk strategies to help shield their insureds from the high expenses caused from encroachments, harms and lawyer charges included in protected innovation court proceedings.4: To a degree, by putting a Copyrighted material on the Internet, the creator is giving inferred consent to general society everywhere to Copy and utilize the material for any reason. "Copyright law does perceive that
Digital Rights Management is a group of technologies used by digital content providers to control their content and devices for sale. As long as DRM has existed there has been arguments for and against the systems. On the one hand it seems only fair that a content provider will get just rewards for his own work without worrying that somebody else can take it and claim credit. On the other side of the scale is it doesn't seem fair that a person who pays to own a digital product may not then be able to share their purchase with a friend, like they would a physical product. This debate is ongoing, and with DRM being a technology that is seemingly here to stay, the best alternative is to find a common ground between sufficient security for ones content ...
Some argue that DRM only makes data more difficult to crack and access and does not really eliminate a resource’s accessibility, some argue that DRM subsequently prevents the use of legal practices while some argue that not all media devices will be able to handle resources governed by DRM. Paul Petrick, founder and co-owner of Headtunes Recordings, had even stated how it might be time to perhaps look for another viable solution to our problems with privacy and copyright infringement. There are three means of implementing Digital Rights Management; these means include a system where a computer code is used, a system where an external human decision maker is used and a third system where both a computer and an external decision maker are
Copyright is a protection for authors, composers or artists and other creators who create innovative idea base work. Copyright law is important because of its role to protect the interests of the creator, while allowing others to gain access to it legally. It designed to make sure that creators receive appropriate rights for their own ideas and creativity, and to promote artistic creativity by protecting the creator.
The legal issue in this case was first, whether the sum of RM 750 should be reduced by about half because the plaintiff spent only...