Copyright
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
A copyright provides its holder the right to restrict unauthorized copying and reproduction of an original expression (i.e. literary work, movie, music, painting, software, mask work, etc.) Copyright stands in contrast to other forms of intellectual property, such as patents, which grant a monopoly right to the use of an invention, because it is not a monopoly right to do something, merely a right to prevent others doing it.
Background
Rights of copyright holder
A copyright holder typically has exclusive rights:
- to make and sell copies of the work (including, typically, electronic copies)
- to import or export the work
- to make derivative works
- to publicly perform the work
- to sell or assign these rights to others
Transfer of rights
Copyrights may be granted, sold, or relinquished. Very often, a copyright holder will, by contract, transfer his copyrights to a corporation. For example, a writer who writes a novel will sign a publication agreement with a company such as Random House in which the writer agrees to transfer all copyrights to Random House in exchange for royalties and other terms. One might ask why a copyright holder would ever give up his rights. The answer is that large companies such as Random House generally have production and marketing capabilities far beyond that of the author. In the digital age of music, music may be copied and distributed for a minimal cost through the Internet, but record labels attempt to provide the service of promoting and marketing the artist so that his work can reach a much larger audience. A copyright holder does not have to transfer all rights completely. Some of the rights may be transferred, or else the copyright holder may grant another party a non-exclusive license to copy and/or distribute the work in a particular region.
Idea-expression dichotomy: the Merger Doctrine
Main article: Idea-expression divide Copyright covers the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. This is called the idea-expression divide, or the Merger Doctrine in the United States. For example, if a book is written describing a new way to organize books in library, a reader can freely use that method without being sued, but what is written in the book, the original expression of the idea, may not be copied. One might be able to obtain a patent for the method, but that is a different subject. If there is art on the cover of the book, that art may also be copyrighted. If the book lists only facts, one might say that it is not original, but if the facts are selected and arranged in an original manner, the book may be copyrighted.
Doctrine of first sale
Note that copyright law does not restrict resale of copies of works, provided those copies were made by or with the permission of the copyright holder. Thus it is legal, for example, to resell a book or a CD that you have purchased, provided you do not keep a copy for yourself. In the US this is known as the First Sale Doctrine, and was established in the US court system to clarify the legality of reselling books in used book stores. Elsewhere it has other names; in the United Kingdom it is known as "Exhaustion of rights" and is a principle which applies to other Intellectual property rights.
Subject to moral rights, copyright also does not prohibit the owner of a physical copy of a work from modifying, defacing, destroying, etc. the work, so long as this does not involve duplication.
Fair use
Copyright also does not prohibit all forms of copying. In the United States, the fair use clause of the Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. Section 107) allows copying and distribution when done fairly. The statute does not clearly define fair use, but examples of fair use are given, and four non-exclusive factors are offered for a fair use analysis. Copyrighted works may also be available for copying through a statutory compulsory license scheme or via a copyright collective or performing rights organisation such as ASCAP or BMI.
How copyrights are obtained and enforced
Typically, works must meet minimal standards of originality in order to qualify for a copyright, and the copyright expires after a set period of time. Different countries impose different tests, although generally the test is low; in the United Kingdom there has to be some 'skill, originality and work' which has gone into it. However, even fairly trivial amounts of these qualities are sufficient.
In the United States, the original owner of the copyright may be the employer of the actual author rather than the author himself if the work is a "work for hire". Again, this principle is widespread; in English Law the Copyright Designs and Patents 1988 provides that where a work in which copyright subsists is made by an employee in the course of his employement the copyright is automatically assigned to the employer.
Copyrights are generally enforced by the owner in a civil law court, but there are also criminal infringement statutes. Criminal sanctions are generally aimed at serious counterfeiting activity.
How Copyrighted Material is Identified
In general when a piece of material such as a film (including DVDs and Videos) and/or music is registered with the appropriate country's copyright office, the material at the beginning or end will contain a copyright notice which is usually a C within a circle © followed by the year of the copyright and the copyright owner's name. However, such notice is not required in nations that have acceded to the Berne Convention. In one way or another, under nearly any copyright regime, a work is generally protected by copyright from the moment of its creation (in the United States the usual phrase is "fixed in a tangible medium of expression") whether it displays a notice or not.
Copyrighting fonts
In the United States, font design is not copyrightable, but it is patentable if novel enough. Stone and Lucida are the only two patented typefaces, and this may not hold up in court.
Europe used to have the same "can't copyright typefaces" laws as the United States, but Germany (in 1981) and the UK (in 1989) have passed laws making typeface designs copyrightable. The UK law is even retroactive (!), so designs produced before 1989 are also copyrighted, if the copyrights wouldn't have already expired (the German one is not retroactive).
Rights beyond copyright
Many European countries (and other countries as a result of the GATT Trade Related Intellectual Property or "TRIPs" agreement) further provide for moral rights in addition to copyrights possessed by authors, such as the right to have their work acknowledged and not be disparaged. (Famously, the Monty Python team managed to use these rights to stop the Monty Python TV programme being shown in the US because the US TV station was putting so many adverts into the program the Monty Python team claimed that it was being ruined as a serious comedy programme.) While copyright is normally assigned or licensed to the publisher, authors generally retain their moral rights (although in some jurisdictions these can be excluded under contract). In most of Europe it is not possible for authors to assign their moral rights (unlike the copyright itself, which is regarded as an item of property which can be sold, licensed, lent, mortgaged or given like any other property). They can agree not to enforce them (and such terms are very common in contracts in Europe). There may also be a requirement for the author to 'assert' these moral rights before they can be enforced. In many books, for example, this is done on a page near the beginning, in amongst the British Library/Library of Congress data.
Some European countries also provide for artist resale rights, which mean that artists are entitled to a portion of the appreciation of the value of their work each time it is sold. These rights are granted on the background of a different tradition, which granted droits d'auteur rather than copyright also granting all creators various moral rights beyond the economic rights recognized in most copyright jurisdictions. (see also parallel importation.)
History of copyright
Main article: History of copyright While governments had previously granted monopoly rights to publishers to sell printed works, the modern concept of copyright originated in 1710 with the British Statute of Anne. This statute first recognized that authors, rather than publishers, should be the primary beneficiary of such laws, and it included protections for consumers of printed work ensuring that publishers could not control their use after sale. It also limited the duration of such exclusive rights to 28 years, after which all works would pass into the public domain.
The Berne Convention of 1886 first established the recognition of copyrights between sovereign nations. (Copyrights were also provided by the Universal Copyright Convention of 1952, but that convention is today largely of historical interest.) Under the Berne convention, copyright is granted automatically to creative works; an author does not have to "register" or "apply for" a copyright. As soon as the work is "fixed", that is, written or recorded on some physical medium, its author is automatically granted all exclusive rights to the work and any derivative works unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them, or until the copyright expires.
Critique of copyright
Critiques of copyright fall broadly into two camps, those who assert that the very concept of copyright has never been of net benefit to society, and has always served simply to enrich a few at the expense of creativity, and those who feel that the current copyright system doesn't work in the new Information society. The general problem is that the current (international) copyright system undermines its own goal (Boyle 1996, 142). The concept of public domain, needed as a pool for future creators, is far too often forgotten or repressed, due to the strong position of the concept of the romantic author, and selective blindness for the possibilities concerning copyright that the Internet and computers offer. Except for unlimited copying, it offers, as said, also new ways for marketing and, more important, the possibilities of code; much depends of course of how code is used (code can be used and is in most of the cases also used in a positive way), but in various cases it threatens not only the public domain in a serious way, but is also ignored when talking about "restoring the balance" which is said to be gravely disturbed by the so called unlimited copying possibilities the Internet creates. [1] Others believe that irrespective of contemporary advances in technology, copyright has been and remains the fundamental way by which authors, sculptors, artists, musicians and others can fund the creation of new works. This view espouses that copyright is the only reason some valuable books and art would be created.
In the US in 2003, controversial changes implemented by the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act extending the length of copyright under U.S. copyright law by 20 years were constitutionally challenged unsuccessfully in the Supreme Court. The Court, in the case called Eldred v. Ashcroft, held inter alia that in placing existing and future copyrights in parity in the CTEA, Congress acted within its authority and did not transgress constitutional limitations.
See also: Copyright infringement of software
Related topics
Copyright law varies from country to country. For information on specific national copyright laws, see:
- U.S. copyright law
- Japan copyright law
- Australian copyright law
- Copyright law of the European Union
- Copyright law of the United Kingdom
- Hong Kong copyright law
- Berne Convention of 1886
- Universal Copyright Convention of 1952
- The WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), of 1994
- WIPO Copyright Treaty of 1996
- WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty of 1996
- Software copyright
- Philosophy of copyright
- Copyright education
- Digital Millennium Copyright Act
- Wikipedia and Copyright Issues
- Copyleft
- Copynorm
- anti-copyright
- Copyright case law
- Copyright-free
- List of leading legal cases in copyright law
- Wikipedia:Copyright problems
- Crypto-anarchism
- Bruce Lehman: Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure (Report of the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights, 1995)
- Trademark
External links
- A brief intro to copyright (by Brad Templeton, with more in-depth links)
- 10 Big Myths about copyright explained
- Responses to the Copyright Crisis - what can be done?
- Thomas Babbington Macaulay on copyright (1841)
- The Free Expression Policy Project report on copyright
- The differences between the length of copyright provided by different countries creates situations where it is legal to publish a work on the Web in one country (e.g., Bulgaria), but illegal to view that Web page in another country (e.g., the United States): http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/nonus.html
- The Origin of Two American Copyright Theories --A Case of the Reception of English Law --, The Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society, Vol. 30, No. 3, (Fall 2000, [Heldref Publications]) by Hideaki Shirata
- Libraries in Today's Digital Age: The Copyright Controversy
- Copyright Background on infoanarchy.org including links to many countries laws, and economics of copyright