The International Framework for the Protection of Authors: Bendable Boundaries and Immovable Obstacles

The International Framework for the Protection of Authors: Bendable Boundaries and Immovable Obstacles

Thursday June 7th   17.30-19.30   CITY UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL 

The international framework within which authors’ rights in their works are protected and exploited is often the topic of debate in the context of  the reform of national copyright laws: Professor Sam Ricketson takes a pragmatic approach to identifying the “immovable obstacles” to reform, while seeking to expose the potential flexibilities and gaps – the “bendable boundaries” - within the international framework that may enable the realisation of some, at least, of the objectives of those who would seek to reform and reformulate copyright laws. It may be that there is a brave new world for the protection of authors’ rights that is embedded within the interstices of the present international framework that is waiting to be uncovered and realised. Why not attend this free seminar to find out more!

Professor Sam Ricketson (University of Melbourne) holds degrees from the Universities of Melbourne and London, and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia and Australian Academy of Law. 

Location: AG07b
College Building
City, University of London
St John Street

London

THE SEMINAR IS FREE BUT YOU NEED TO SIGN UP FOR THIS EVENT

https://www.city.ac.uk/events/2018/june/the-international-framework-for-the-protection-of-authors-bendable-boundaries-and-immovable-obstacles

The CopyKat - its good to share - isn't it?

Bruno Mars

MusicMetric says that Bruno Mars appears to be the most-stolen-from singer of the year, with 5.8 million illegal downloads. Rihanna came in a close second with an estimated 5.4 million songs downloaded illegally, Daft Punk, Justin Timberlake and FloRida also made the top 10. With films, The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey, Django Unchained and Fast & Furious Six top the pirate charts.

Formats they are a-changin'

Interesting statistics from the USA and UK's recorded music sector show just how the legal market is changing: Sales of digital music dipped in the USA in 2013, the first time since iTunes launched in 2003. Nielsen say that US digital single tracks dropped from 1.34 billion in 2012 to 1.26 billion last year. The drop is being blamed on the success of music streaming sites. In the UK a similar pattern emerged: The British record industry achieved revenues of £1 billion-plus in 2013 according to statistics published by record label trade body the BPI and the Official Charts Company. The figures also reveal, for the first time, the value of the subscription streaming market in the UK which now generates £103 million a year, up from £77 million in 2012. The BPI/OCC say that in 2013 twice as many tracks were streamed overall than in 2012, totalling 7.4 billion. This includes music consumed on both subscription and ad-funded platforms - with Spotify, Deezer, YouTube and Vevo all included - though revenues generated by the advertising-based services are in addition to the £103 million in subscription sales. As with the USA, the number of digital singles sold in 2013 was down on 2012, with 175.6 million tracks downloaded, compared to the record breaking 183.3 million in 2012. But digital album sales were up again, by 6.8%, to 32.6 million units. Traditional revenue streams held up well, despite the downsizing of the UK's biggest high street retailer for music, HMV, and the closure of Amazon's main online competitor Play.com.  CD sales did to decline, by 12.8% in 2013, but the decline has slowed and sales of this format still accounted for 64% of all albums sold during the year, some 60.6 million units. The UK's vinyl revival continued in 2013, with sales of seven-inch singles, twelve-inch singles and vinyl LPs up 34%, 60.3% and 100.8% respectively, although overall numbers of units sold is very small in comparison to CDs and digital.

Suddenly The Republic of The Gambia is in the in the CopyKat's sights. First off,  Fatou Mass Jobe-Njie, The Gambia’s minister of tourism and culture, has said that copyright must be strengthened in the digital environment in order to prevent infringements. The minister told The Gambia Tourism and Hospitality Institute that creative works such as music can now be easily exploited on the internet via downloads and streaming, posing great challenges to both content creators and users saying “Sadly, in many of our countries in the sub-region, creators still cannot benefit from the sweat of their creations,” she said. “It is only through initiatives such as the Observatory that the creative community in our ECOWAS sub-region can start to live in a dignity befitting creators, and to allow our governments to also get returns from the investments in cultural infrastructure.” She said that in 2004, her ministry managed to have a new copyright law for The Gambia to replace the colonial law of 1913, which was "grossly inadequate". And in separate news, The director of Culture, Education, Science and Technology of the ECOWAS Commission informed stakeholders that the ECOWAS Regional Copyright Observatory (RCO) will present some computers and other office equipment to the Gambian Copyright Office at the National Council for Arts and Culture, to strengthen their capacity. Professor Abdoulaye Maga made this disclosure Monday at the Gambia Tourism and Hospitality Institute  during the opening of a five-day training workshop for copyright administrators and members of the Collecting Society of The Gambia. On Monday a week-long training workshop for Gambia copyright stakeholders started at the Gambia Hotel School in Kanifing.

The training, organised by the National Centre for Art and Culture (NCAC) and funded by ECOWAS, is aimed at bringing a responsive copyright system in the country.


Wildly popular TV series The Simpsons have tackled copyright infringement and the issues surrounding the illegal downloading of movies - after Homer Simpson illegally downloads the movie 'Radioactive Man' from Bootleg Bay with the help of his son, Bart. Having been thrown out of the cinema as a paying customer during the said film, Homer takes to pirating movies so much that he sets up his own backyard movie theatre for friends and neighbours, showing them a pirated screener movie so they don’t have to pay a high ticket price and put up with rudeness and commercials while watching the movie! The episode is called 'Steal This' and it is in series 25 - there are some clips on the Simpson's Facebook page here. One reviewer called the episode "a perfect animated version of the great copyright debate on movie piracy".

A nest of sexy beasts?

In the USA, a Des Moines company is suing Google, demanding it remove a copyrighted photo from a private blog that mocks corporate headshots. ARAG North America and Ann Dieleman, a senior vice president and chief marketing officer for the insurance company, filed the copyright lawsuit  in the federal court and ARAG said Google has denied its requests to remove the photo, which was posted on SexyExecs.blogspot.com in 2009. The author of the private blog is not known, but the blog is hosted through Blogger, a company owned by Google, just like the 1709 blog itself. 

And finally, in our globe trotting round up of all things shared, Germany’s highest court has ruled  that parents are, in principle, not liable if their adult children use the family Internet connection for file sharing. The decision follows a November 2012 verdict where the Federal Court of Justice ruled that parents are not liable for those aged under 18 who file share, as long as they warned their child that unauthorized downloading and sharing of copyrighted material online is illegal and they were unaware their child violated this prohibition. The court has now said that where children are adults (18+), parents don’t have to warn them in order to avoid liability: here the stepson of a home owner used the family's internet connection to share 3,749 music recordings on the Internet. Record companies had tried to recover €3,454 (about US$4,700) in damages from the stepfather who owned the connection, rather than from the stepson. Whilst the stepfather signed an agreement that his Internet connection would not be used for that purpose again, he refused to pay, saying that he was not liable for his stepson’s deeds: In 2010 the Regional Court of Cologne and subsequently the Higher Regional Court of Cologne in 2011 both ruled that the stepfather was liable for the copyright infringement. He was ordered to pay €2,841 to the record companies by the Higher Regional Court. The German Federal Court of Justice have now overruled this, although the court did say that if the owner of the Internet connection had a specific reason to suspect that family members are using the connection for rights violations, he or she should take necessary measures to prevent infringements.

Head of US Copyright Office wants reform

This afternoon the US Committee on the Judiciary will hear from Maria Pallante, head of the US Copyright Office, on "The Register's Call for Updates to U.S. Copyright Law". Pallante's message is simple: the law is showing the strain of its age and requires the attention of Congress.

Pallante says that "a central equation for Congress to consider is what does and does not belong under a copyright owner’s control in the digital age. I do not believe that the control of copyright owners should be absolute, but it needs to be meaningful. People around the world increasingly are accessing content on mobile devices and fewer and fewer of them will need or desire the physical copies that were so central to the 19th and 20th century copyright laws."

The list of issues which need to be addressed will surprise no-one: clarifying the scope of exclusive rights, revising exceptions and limitations for libraries and archives, addressing orphan works, accommodating persons who have print disabilities, providing guidance to educational institutions, exempting incidental copies in appropriate instances, updating enforcement provisions, providing guidance on statutory damages, reviewing the efficacy of the DMCA, assisting with small copyright claims, reforming the music marketplace, updating the framework for cable and satellite transmissions, encouraging new licensing regimes, and improving the systems of copyright registration and recordation.

When it comes to specific changes to be made to the Copyright Act, Pallante suggests that the copyright term be reduced from 70 years plus life to 50 years plus life. A small reduction, but one which Pallante hopes will "alleviate some of the pressure and gridlock" on copyright.

She goes on to suggest that instead of the general principle that copyright owners should grant prior approval for the reproduction and dissemination of their works, the law be flipped so that copyright owners would need to specifically opt out to prevent certain uses. It seems that this suggestion could be viewed as a radical change to copyright law which Pallante discusses only in relation to educational institutions and libraries but which has the potential to go further. Alternatively it could simply be seen as an extension of the fair use exception, even though Pallante does not use those words.

Although Pallante's statement is general and on the surface uncontroversial, and any changes implemented will not happen any time soon, it is good to see that the US is looking to modernise its copyright laws, and will be interesting to see what (if any!) changes are made.

Pallante's statement can be found in full here.

For those who are interested, all House Judiciary Committee hearings are webcast live here. At 15:30 EST (19.30 GMT) on 21 March 2013, Pallante will testify before the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet on amending the U.S. Copyright Act.