The case for criminalizing copyright piracy on a commercial scale and the appropriate level of penalties: an assessment of the international standard for criminal enforcement measures and its implementation in Australian and Malaysian copyright laws

Entered into force on 1 January 1995, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) built into the international intellectual property regime a set of comprehensive multilateral norms on intellectual property enforcement. The Agreement became ‘the first international [intellectual property] treaty to include provisions that deal with domestic criminal procedures and remedies’. Article 61 of the TRIPS Agreement specifically requires members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to ‘provide for criminal procedures and penalties to be applied at least in cases of wilful trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy on a commercial scale’. Shortly after the adoption of the TRIPS Agreement, international bureaucrats, government policymakers, industry representatives, and academic commentators quickly extolled the benefits of having a wide set of international intellectual property enforcement standards. A decade later, however, developed countries and their supportive industries began to complain about the inadequacy and ineffectiveness of these standards. They have also pushed aggressively for the establishment of new and higher standards through bilateral, plurilateral, and regional trade agreements, including the recently adopted yet highly controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

Software piracy has become one of the major social and business problems in our society as the information technology era came to the fore. IT companies and software developers lost huge sums of money due to software piracy. Most people would not link software piracy, commercial morality and religious beliefs together. However, management researchers propose that the moral tendency of an individual may affect the respective person's ethical decision-making towards copyright infringements, specifically software piracy. Thus, this paper attempts to identify the cause and effect relationship between morality and ethical decision-making. This research examines the relationship between an individual's religious beliefs and ethical decision-making with regard to software piracy in a scenario-based vignette. The structural equation model (SEM) is used to identify this cause and effect relationship. The research findings suggest that an individual's religious beliefs are pertinent to the ethical decision-making process with specific reference to software piracy.

Copyright has a big change for the country, especially in terms of trade. Then the difference in copyright becomes something very important. Both national and international, as agreed in Geneva in Septemebr 1990, where Intellectual Property in Business Briefing addresses issues known as TRIPs (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights). The enforcement of these TRIPs really does eradicate efforts against various forms of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), including negative piracy of musical works. Should Indonesia ignore the policies in the provisions set forth in the TRIPs agreement, Indonesia will continue to be included in the list of countries that need to be monitored and view (watchlist) and that means any export product from the Indonesian state will be examined for its technological content and questionable the origin of its authenticity. Therefore, law enforcement for copyright such as DVD / VCD piracy that developed rapidly in one of the areas in Indonesia needs to be implemented well in accordance with the prevailing provisions, in order to provide certainty and legal changes to one's copyrights.

Background and Aim: Among the existing agreements to protect intellectual property rights, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has set the highest level of enforcement standards. This study tries to clarify and identify differences between the ACTA provisions and innovations with other international regulations and its effects on the universal access to medicines in developing countries. Materials and Methods: In this qualitative research, document analysis method was applied. By using this method and analyzing the characteristics of the ACTA regulations, we will discussed its effects on the universal access to the medicines and public health. Findings: ACTA negotiators have created an agreement that shifts international hard law rules and soft law encouragements toward making enforcement of intellectual property rights in courts and borders, less costly, and more deterrent in the level of penalties through omission of the felexibility of TRIPS Agreement, and required transprancy and participation. So that, it increases the risks and consequences of wrongful searches, seizures, lawsuits and other enforcement actions for those relying on intellectual property limitations and exceptions to access markets. This is likely to make affordable medicines more expencive and rare in many developing countries and threaten the public health. Conclusion: The ACTA must be interperated and performed so that the right of committed countries to health and access to medicines be protected; when access to some medicines requires to breach the intellectual property rights, intrernational inhibition and access to them should be prevented through a common accepted approach. Please cite this article as: Zahedi M, Erfanmanesh MH, Houshmand N. Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and Access to Medicines in Developing Countries. Bioethics Journal 2017; 7(25): 45-62.

Copyright is a complicated area of law that impacts on the lives and practices of almost everyone in our society. The reach of the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) adds to the challenge of encouraging compliance with the law. This article suggests that recourse should be made to an area of legal analysis that has focused on issues of compliance and enforcement – regulatory theory. While much of the work in that area examines the actions of governments and government agencies, a recent idea – that of decentred regulation – accommodates the diverse subject-matters and range of potential users of copyrighted material that are at the heart of the regulatory challenge. The theory, therefore, has the potential for furthering the understanding of how copyright law impacts on those who are subject to it. The argument is that the better the understanding of how copyright operates as a form of regulation, the better the chance of compliance. To assist in the application of the theory, the norms associated with ‘digital piracy’ will be used as an example, chosen because the term has become one of the more widely articulated norms relating to copyright infringement (such as via the anti-piracy advertisements on DVDs) and because the behaviour it seeks to control evidences all the problems that attach to the regulation of copyright.

Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) Agree-ment interesting to be understood in the perspective of hard law and soft law. TRIPs Agreement justified as hard or soft law by identifying the norms in the TRIPs agreement. Parameter obligation of TRIPs agreement visible implementation and enforcement of agreement norm with full compliance to fourth of the IPR Convention for the State parties is an indicator of unconditional obligation. Parameters precision TRIPS agreement showed formulation of general obligation setting up the implementation of treaty obligations is regulated in detail and the use of ”shall” term in any norm, describe the imperative norm character and shown indicator as substantial limited of interpretation with the parties might not interpreted. Parameter delegation looked explicitly provision of implementation and enforcement agreement that put an obligation on national authorities of state parties through domestic law and its courts. Parameter obligation, precision as well as delegation showed as high indicator that the TRIPs agreement characterized as hard law.

Effects of TRIPSPlus Provisions in International Trade Agreements Upon Access to Medicines in Developing Countries

Software piracy, otherwise known as copyright infringement, is one of several forbidden actions that may threat to the technological advances. This can be done by copying, downloading, sharing, selling, or installing multiple copies onto personal or work computers. The most important cause is habitual society using commercial .software even though their purchasing powers are low. This paper describes some solutions to keep level of software piracy down and which parties required to successfully implement those solutions.

One of the main objectives of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is to facilitate world’s trade and production. It enforces legally binding multilateral agreements on trade in goods, services and trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights. The Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) Agreement was implemented to regulate standards of Intellectual Property (IP) regulations in WTO member countries. Being a member of the WTO and a signatory to the TRIPs Agreement, it was compulsory for Sri Lanka and five other South Asian countries (Bangladesh, Nepal, the Maldives, India and Pakistan) to formulate its IP regulations to comply with the TRIPs Agreement. According to the agreement, by 2006 India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and by 2013 Bangladesh and Nepal have to provide legal protection to plant varieties and farmers’ traditional knowledge via patents or by an effective sui generis system or by both. All of the above six countries have during the past 15 years implemented or drafted several acts to comply with the TRIPs Agreement. Sri Lanka has passed the Intellectual Property Rights Act No. 36 of 2003 to comply with the TRIPs Agreement. However, this Act does not provide protection for plant varieties and farmers’ traditional knowledge as it does not allow patenting of plants. Due to several reasons such as lack of demand from civil society, a poor legal system, lack of properly established institutional system, etc,. Sri Lanka was unable to build an effective intellectual property rights regime complying with the agreement, especially for the agricultural sector. Further, due to a delay in establishing rules and regulations to comply with the agreement, the Sri Lankan agricultural sector faces several difficulties in international trade and it has also lost a number of opportunities to use its own plant varieties for the benefit of future generations. The article suggests several techniques and methods that could be followed in implementing intellectual property rights in agriculture in order to promote investments and accelerate trade especially in Sri Lanka. And also it suggests the importance of having a regional centre to manage intellectual property rights effectively among South Asian countries.

Intellectual property rights (IPRs) and the regimes of protection and enforcement surrounding them have often been the subject of debate, a debate fuelled in the past year by the increased emphasis on free-trade negotiations and multi-lateral treaties including the now-rejected AntiCounterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and its Goliath cousin, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA). The significant media coverage afforded to these treaties, however, risks thrusting certain perspectives of IPR protection and enforcement into the spotlight, while eclipsing alternative, but equally crucial voices that are perhaps in greater need of legitimate dialogue to safeguard their own collection of intangible rights. Caught in the vortex of inadequate recognition and ineffective protection, are the communal intellectual property rights of indigenous communities, centred on traditional knowledge (TK), traditional cultural expressions (TCE), expressions of folklore (EoF) and genetic resources (GR). The fundamental incompatibility between current IPR regimes and the rights of indigenous peoples stems largely from the lack of understanding of the driving forces that have led to the development of TK, TCEs, EoFs and GRs – that of the protection of whole indigenous cultures through the preservation of the traditional knowledge acquired by these communities as a whole. The issues are complex. Professor James Anaya’s 2014 keynote speech at the 26 Session of the Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore at WIPO highlighted the differences governing the intangible rights of indigenous peoples generally, and why these world views have so often been left out of the current mainframe of IPRs. Whereas, the majority view of IPRs tends to focus on the rights of the individual and their protection as such, indigenous cultures are inherently built over centuries and across generations on communal understandings and organic exchanges of knowledge, making it practically impossible to ascribe the ownership of a certain set of IPRs to one or a few individuals. As Professor Anaya articulates and the authors of this special issue of JIPLP varyingly contemplate, the similarities between the inadequacies of the protection of tangible rights of indigenous peoples (eg indigenous land rights) and that of their intangible rights protection (including IPRs) tend to stem from a common source – the failure to acknowledge the “inherent logic of indigenous peoples’ world views”. Perhaps the solutions lie not just in finding ways to include indigenous IPRs in current IPR regimes, but through the facilitation of an entire paradigm shift to capture the nuances of these issues both effectively and precisely. How, for instance, can indigenous IPRs be valued commercially, and how may adequate compensation models be developed in exchange for the commercial use of these rights? A key to increasing the recognition of the inherent value of indigenous IPRs within their traditional cultural settings may lie in developing methods to properly value this worth in tangible terms. What seems necessary is a model to adequately measure the significance of indigenous IPRs, starting at the source (the indigenous community), and finding ways of translating this value into benefit systems that can be returned to the communities from which the IPRs were sourced. Hence recognition is attributed to the crucial part these IPRs play within the cultures from which they are derived. The strength of intellectual property law lies in its ability to meet the demands of a frenetically changing world, thus affording it vast amounts of power in shaping the law of the future; but this brings with it the

The role of enforcement is crucial for the protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs), as it provides the rights holders with access to legal tools and remedies essential for safeguarding their intellectual creations. The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) establishes a comprehensive framework for the enforcement of IPRs, covering both procedural and substantive elements that member states are obligated to implement within their domestic laws. These provisions are designed to enable effective and timely actions against IPRs infringements. As a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Yemen is obligated to harmonise its national intellectual property (IP) legislation with the enforcement provisions specified in Part III of the TRIPS Agreement. This article analyses the existing IPRs enforcement mechanisms in Yemen, with particular emphasis on both civil and criminal procedures. Utilising the TRIPS Agreement as a framework, this article examines the extent to which the enforcement mechanisms and remedies provided under Yemeni law align with the requirements set forth by the TRIPS Agreement. By adopting a doctrinal legal method, the required data for this article is gathered from the relevant statutes, case law, the official website of Yemeni government agencies, law books, and journal articles. Utilising the TRIPS Agreement as a framework, this article examines the extent to which the enforcement mechanisms and remedies provided under Yemeni law align with the TRIPS requirements. The findings indicate that the civil and administrative procedures and remedies in Yemen's IP laws are largely consistent with the stipulations of the TRIPS Agreement. Nevertheless, there remains scope for enhancement, especially with regard to the evidentiary provisions. In terms of criminal enforcement, both the Trademarks Act 2010 and the Copyright Act 2012 criminalise deliberate acts of trademark counterfeiting and copyright piracy, prescribing penalties that include imprisonment and fines. However, the existing penalties under these Acts are inadequate to serve as an effective deterrent against such violations. This shortcoming is in conflict with the requirements of Article 61 of the TRIPS Agreement, which mandates that penalties for these offences must be sufficiently severe to prevent future infringements. To ensure Yemen's full compliance with international standards and to enhance its efforts to combat trademark counterfeiting and copyright piracy, it is recommended that the country revise its IP laws to incorporate more stringent penalties, in alignment with the provisions of the TRIPS Agreement.

This study explores the issue of media piracy from the perspectives of audience, which is a topic that has not been examined sufficiently. In doing so, this study narrows the population of the study to a diaspora since diasporic audience has attracted little scholarly attention in media piracy literature. To understand the diasporic audience’s perspective on media piracy, the study utilizes the Korean diaspora and a petition started by the Korean file-sharing website. A file-sharing website used and managed by Korean diasporic audiences, Dabdate, started a petition to stop Korean broadcasting stations from shutting down the website for copyright violation. This study conducts a frame analysis to understand the perspectives of the Korean diasporic audience from news articles, online community posts, and Dabdate’s petition endorsements collected over about a month. The findings revealed that the diasporic audience’ perspective did not align with that of the industry. The media industry’s claim that media piracy has caused enormous damage did not appear anywhere but the Korean diasporic news articles. When Korean diasporic users shared the sentiment, they were facing a sanction due to media piracy. The Korean diasporic audiences considered the Korean media as a public good, which they were entitled as free access by law. Thus, in their eyes, media piracy was not as problematic as the industry claimed. Korean media consumption was also a way to maintain the Korean identity for the Korean diasporic audiences, especially so for those in areas with small Korean immigrant communities. Some Korean diasporic audiences found copyright reinforcement efforts offensive and as a disenfranchisement of their identity as Korean citizens and Koreans.

Archiving Our Culture in a Digital Environment: Copyright Law and Digitisation Practices in Cultural Heritage Institutions

Piracy is the single greatest threat to copyright owners in the US and globally, and China stands at the heart of the international piracy epidemic, producing nearly two-thirds of the goods on the $512 billion worldwide counterfeit market. Chinese piracy costs the US music and film industries billions of dollars in losses each year, and the Chinese domestic music and film industries have been decimated at the hands of pirates. Any solution to the international piracy problem must begin with a solution to the problem in China. However, the road to such a solution has become far more difficult with the rapid growth of the Internet in China, and consequently, the rapid growth of Internet piracy there. This paper contemplates what the future holds for the protection of audiovisual works in China. It is meant to provide cultural and historical context to the copyright piracy epidemic in China, and, with that context in mind, realistically assess three policy directions from which the Chinese government might choose going forward as it seeks to defeat piracy in the Internet age and develop vibrant domestic music and film industries. The three policy directions examined are: (1) cracking down on piracy; (2) staying the present course; and (3) establishing an online alternative compensation system that would allow users to download unlimited music and movies from the Internet while ensuring copyright owners are fairly compensated for their works. I argue that the third option could provide the optimal balance between the objectives of Chinese consumers (more entertainment at a lower price), copyright owners (fair compensation), and the Chinese government (cultural enrichment and reduction of Internet and physical piracy). Information used in this paper was obtained from numerous interviews I conducted in Shanghai and Beijing during December 2004 and January 2005. All of those interviewed are connected with copyright in China, either in the administrative, legal, or entertainment fields. Interviewees included government officials, intellectual property lawyers, an appellate court judge specializing in intellectual property cases, law professors, music producers, a television producer, a publicist, an agent, songwriters, and music industry executives.

Using the data collected from several universities in China and the United States, which have drastically different piracy rates, economic development stages, income levels, and national cultures, this study aims to identify which demographic factors affect software piracy significantly. Totally, the dataset includes 600 valid responses. Multivariate data analysis, supported by Multivariate Analysis of Variance and Turkey's test, reveals that among various factors, country difference and gender most significantly influence software piracy. In addition, this study offers recommendations on how to curb software piracy effectively. Keywords: China, United States, empirical analysis, intellectual property rights, software piracy INTRODUCTION Software piracy, defined as the unauthorized use or illegal copying/distribution of copyrighted software without explicit permission from the copyright holder (BSA, 2012; Hinduza, 2008), threatens the long-term viability of the software industry by both discouraging development efforts and, more seriously, triggering international political disputes (Bagchi, Kirs, & Cerveny, 2006; Moores & Chang, 2006; Rawlinson & Luption, 2007). Specifically, software piracy strains the ability of technology companies to invest in new jobs and new technologies, harms local resellers and services firms, lowers government tax revenues, and increases the risk of cybercrime and security problems. The 2011 BSA/IDC Global Software Piracy Study projected that lowering software piracy by just 10 percent over four years would create nearly 500,000 new jobs and pump $140 billion into ailing economies. The piracy rate denotes the amount of software pirated as a percentage of the total software installed in each country (BSA, 2012; Mishra, Akman, & Yazici, 2006). Computer software is one of the most common examples of intellectual property and is granted an ownership right called Intellectual Property Right (IPR) as well as legal protection, including copyrights and patents. Copyrights protect forms of expression such as written material and artistic work; patents protect ideas used for industrial products or processes (Shim & Taylor, 1989). Computer software piracy, a significant segment of the larger digital piracy phenomenon (Holsapple, Iyengar, & Rao, 2008), violates IPR and is considered a criminal act under copyright law in both China and the United States. Software piracy sometimes occurs from a common misunderstanding about software purchases: When a person buys software, one does not purchase the actual software, but rather a license to use it. The license tells a purchaser how many times the software can be installed. If one makes more copies of the software than the license permits, then s/he commits piracy (BSA, 2012). The most commonly pirated types of software are operating systems and office, antivirus, and entertainment software (Hsu & Su, 2008). Software piracy has been a major concern for many advanced countries, especially for the United States, where approximately 75% of the world's packaged software is currently produced (Schrank, 2003). A dramatic worldwide increase in computer usage, rapid advancements in computer and data compression techniques, and the ever-improving/expanding broadband accessibility to the Internet have contributed to software piracy on a global scale. A recent study (BSA Global Software Piracy Study 2013) revealed that 43% of the software installed on PCs around the world was not properly licensed; the commercial value of those unlicensed installations (piracy) was $62.7 billion. The Asia-Pacific region showed the highest rate (62%) of unlicensed software use among all regions and accounted for $21 billion (over 33% of the worldwide commercial value loss) of financial loss. China's piracy rate was 74%, with the lost commercial value of $8.767 billion accounting for about 42% of the entire Asia-Pacific region's financial loss and 14% of the global loss. …