The Primary Function OF a Copyright Law Is to Protect the Fruits of a Man’s Work, Labor and skill Being Taken Away By Other’s”-Discuss This Statement
Introduction:
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an exclusive right of ownership to it, but it is usually for a limited time. Generally, it is “the right to copy”, but also gives the copyright holder the right to be credited for the work, to determine who may acclimatize the work to other forms, who may perform the work, who may financially benefited from it, and other related rights. It is a form of intellectual property (like the patent, the trademark, and the trade secret) applicable to any expressible form of an idea or information that is substantive and discrete.
Most authorities distinguish copyright boundaries, allowing “fair” exceptions to the creator’s inimitability of copyright, and giving users certain rights. The development of digital media and computer network technologies have prompted reinterpretation of these exceptions, introduced new difficulties in implementing copyright, and inspired supplementary challenges to copyright law’s philosophic source. Simultaneously, businesses with great economic dependence upon copyright have advocated the extension and expansion of their scholarly property rights, and sought additional legal and technological enforcement.
While no creative work is automatically private worldwide, there are international treaties which provide protection automatically for all innovative works as soon as they are set in a medium. There are two primary international copyright agreements, the Buenos Aires Convention and the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.
Berne Convention
The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (also referred to as just the Berne Convention) requires protection for all imaginative works in a fixed medium be automatic, and last for at least 50 years after the author’s death for any work except for photographic and cinematographic works. Photographic works are tied to a minimum of 25 years. Cinematographic works are protected for 50 years after first showing, or 50 years after formation if it hasn’t been shown within 50 years after the creation. The Berne Convention also allows for the rule of the shorter term, stating that “except the legislation of that country otherwise provides, the term shall not exceed the term fixed in the country of origin of the work”. Not all countries have applied this rule however.
Copyright Objective
The Primary Function of Copyright:
Law is to protect from seizure by other people, the fruits of a man’s work, labor, skill or taste. this fortification is given by making it illegal as an “infringement of copyright” to replicate or copy any “literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work” without the approval of the owner of the copyright in that work. Copyright objectives are-
• This is a negative right which prevents misuse of labor and skill employed by one author by another. The moral basis of this principal is based on the eighth commandment “thou shall not whip”.
• Works’ are protected not ideas!
Copyright law in Bangladesh
Mohammad Monirul Azam
Copyright is a right given by the law to creators of literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works and producers of cinematograph films and sound recordings etc. In fact, it is a package of rights including, inter alia, rights of reproduction, communication to the public, adaptation and translation of the work. However, there could be slight variations in the work of art of the rights depending on the work. There is no copyright in ideas. There is an acute lack of consciousness on various issues relating to copyright and related rights amongst stakeholders, enforcement agencies, specialized users like the scientific and academic communities and members of the public.
Objectives:
The significance of copyright was recognized only after the creation of printing press, which enabled the large production of books in large quantity feasible. However, the prime objective of copyright law is to encourage authors, composers, artists and designers to create original works by rewarding them with the exclusive right for a limited period to exploit the work for monetary gain. It protects the writer or creator of the original work from the illegal reproduction or abuse of his resources.
Copyright ensures certain minimum safeguards of the rights of authors over their creations, thereby protecting and rewarding imagination. Creativity being the basis of progress, no civilized society can afford to ignore the basic requirement of heartening the same. Economic and social development of a society is dependent on creativity. The protection provided by copyright to the efforts of writers, artists, designers, dramatists, musicians, architects and producers of sound recordings, cinematograph films and computer software, creates an atmosphere conducive to creativity, which induces them to create more and motivates others to create.
Application of copyright law:
One of the rights accorded to the owner of copyright is the right to reproduce or to approve others to reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords. This right is subject to certain restrictions found in sections 107 through 118 of the copyright law (title 17, U. S. Code). One of the more significant limitations is the policy of “fair use.” The doctrine of fair use has developed through a substantial number of court decisions over the years and has been codified in section 107 of the copyright law.
Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as condemnation, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and investigate. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair.
1. The reason and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
2. The nature of the copyrighted work
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work
The distinction between what is fair use and what is infringement in a particular case will not always be clear or easily distinct. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without consent. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted stuff does not alternate for obtaining permission.
[1]The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of diagram or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or amplification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; imitation of a work in legislative or judicial measures or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.”
Solutions:
French solution to illegal download and copyright infringement – tax Google and Yahoo
By Doug Hanchard for ZDNet Government | January 7, 2010 — 11:24 GMT (03:24 PST)
The French government commissioned a study to determine solutions to the problems of downloading copyright protected movies and music. The panel’s proposal is to tax search engine companies, backing new portals that would make available legal ways for customers to access copyright materials. In a Globe and Mail post, the government’s Minister of Culture, Frederic Mitterrand;
The plan “seemed predictable to us, if we want to maintain a certain pluralism in the culture world” and prevent the “endless enrichment of two or three world players who will impose their cultural formatting on us,” Patrick Zelnik, a record creator who helped lead the mission, was quoted as telling Liberation newspaper.
This idea is similar to how blank VCR and music tapes were taxed in some countries to deal out to the music industry in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Google’s response in the article was polite but clearly concerned;
Google appears cool to the idea, but sought a appeasing tone. Google France’s public associations director said the company told the mission it wanted “co-operation between Internet players and the cultural fields to enlarge new models.”
Independent Legal Research:
Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony
Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53 (1884), was a case determined by the Supreme Court of the United Statesthat to expand copyright protection to photography.
Background:
[2]Famed photographer Napoleon Sarony filed a copyright infringement suit against the Burrow-Giles Lithographic Company, which had marketed unauthorized lithographs of Sarony’s photograph of writerOscar Wilde, permitted “Oscar Wilde No. 18.” The company argued that photographs could not qualify as “writings” or as the creation of an “author”, in the language of the grant of power to Congress under article I, section 8, clause 8 of the United States Constitution to protect copyrights, and so § 4952 of theCopyright Act of 1870, which clearly extended safety to photographs, was unauthorized. The federal trial court for the Southern District of New York, though expressing some hesitation over the constitutionality of § 4952, declined to nullify it and awarded a $610 judgment to Sarony (the equivalent of just over $12,000 in 2005).
The Supreme Court’s decision:
[3]Regarding the clarification of “writings” in the foundation, Justice Miller’s unanimous opinion for the Supreme Court wrote that Congress has “properly stated these to include all forms of writing, printing, engraving, etching, &c., by which the ideas in the mind of the author are given noticeable expression.” The Court noted that “maps and charts” were among the subjects of the first Copyright Act of 1790, and those illustration and engravings were added when it was first amended in 1802. The members of Congress that passed these first copyright acts were contemporaries of the Framers of the Constitution, and many of them attended the Constitutional Convention itself.
Even if other visual works could be copyrighted, Burrow-Giles argued, photography was merely a mechanical process rather than an art, and could not embody an author’s “idea”. The Court accepted that this may be true of “normal” photographs, but this was not in the case of Sarony’s image of Wilde. The trial court had found that Sarony had posed Wilde in front of the camera and recommended his expression, and selected his costume, the background and accessories to create a particular composition of line and light. This control that Sarony exercised over the subject matter, in the view of the Court, showed that he was the “writer” of “an original work of art” over which the Constitution intended Congress to grant him exclusive rights.
Apple Computer, Inc. v. Mackintosh Computers Ltd.
Apple Computer, Inc. v. Mackintosh Computers Ltd. [1990] 2 S.C.R. 2009, is a Supreme Court of Canada case on copyright law regarding the copyrightability of software. The Court found that programs within ROM silicon chips (in this case, the Autostart ROM andApplesoft in Apple II+ systems) are protected under the Copyright Act, and that the conversion from the source code into object code was a imitation that did not alter the copyright protection of the original work.
Background
The defendant Mackintosh Computers Ltd. was a manufacturer of unlicensed Apple II+ clones that were competent of running software designed for Apple II+ computers. At issue in this case were the Autostart ROM and Applesoft programs embedded in the computer chips of Apple’s computers.
At trial, the defendants conceded that they copied the chips in question by burning the contents of Apple’s ROM chips into their own EPROMs.They further conceded that software written in assembly code was copyrightable under the Copyright Act as literary works. However, the defendants argued that they have copied only the contents of ROM.
The trial judge found that the software used into Apple’s ROMs were both a translation and reproduction of the assembly language source code, thus were protected by s. 3(1) of the Copyright Act.
The Federal Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal. Two of the appellate judges held that the object code was a reproduction of the assembly code, while the third held that either they can be translation or reproduction but they were protected by copyright law.
Ruling
The Supreme Court held that the machine code embedded in the Apple ROM chips was an exact reproduction of the written assembly code, and as such were protected by s. 3(1) of the Copyright Act.
The Supreme Court refused to follow the case of Computer Edge Pty. Ltd. v. Apple Computer, Inc.decided by the High Court of Australia, which had virtually identical facts. In that case, the court held that the chips contained a “sequence of electrical impulses” which could not be subject to copyright.
Aftermath
Not long after the case the Copyright Act of Canada was amended to explicitly include software as a “literary work” within the Act.
Conclusion:
Copyright law permits artists to profit from their works, while also allowing the general public to eventually use copyrighted works after a certain period of time. Although the applicable time frame for copyright protection has been extensive several times, copyright law prevents authors and their heirs from profiting from a copyrighted work for an indefinite period. So it is very important to follow copyright
References:
§ Purdue University: Copyright Overview
§ U.S. Copyright Office: Copyright Basics
§ U.S. Copyright Office: Fair Use
§ Stanford University: Fair Use
- Harvard University: Copyright and Fair Use
- Copyright Alliance: FAQ
- Marquette University Law School: The Most Important Supreme Court Case in Copyright Law: Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios (1984)
- Gordon Firemark: 3 Reasons Why Copyright Registration is Important for all Kinds of Documents
- Cornell University: Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States
www.copyhype.com/references/
depts.washington.edu/uwcopy/Copyright_References/
www.geom.uiuc.edu/events/courses/1996/…/Copyright/credits.html
www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s19.html
www.csulb.edu/~jvancamp/copyref.html
www.irishstatutebook.ie/2000/en/act/pub/0028/sec0004.html
www.councilofelrond.com › Tolkien Biography › a. Introduction
www.artsrochester.org/artisttools/copyright.htm
www.nanowrimo.org › … › Resources & Writing Support › Writing 101
[1] www.copyright.com › Home › Education › Resources
fairuse.stanford.edu › Copyright and Fair Use Overview › Fair Use
[2] www.invispress.com/law/copyright/burrow.html
copy.law.cam.ac.uk/cam/tools/request/showRecord.php?id…us…
· ^ Full text of the Supreme Court’s decision
· ^ The Sarony Photographs of Oscar Wilde (complete)