Copyright Legislation Research Articles

Institutionalized Algorithmic Enforcement – The Pros and Cons of the EU Approach to UGC Platform Liability

Algorithmic copyright enforcement – the use of automated filtering tools to detect infringing content before it appears on the internet – has a deep impact on the freedom of users to upload and share information. Instead of presuming that user-generated content (UGC) does not amount to infringement unless copyright owners take action and provide proof, the default position of automated filtering systems is that every upload is suspicious and that copyright owners are entitled to ex ante control over the sharing of information online. If platform providers voluntarily introduce algorithmic enforcement measures, this may be seen as a private decision following from the freedom of companies to run their business as they wish. If, however, copyright legislation institutionalizes algorithmic enforcement and imposes a legal obligation on platform providers to employ automated filtering tools, the law itself transforms copyright into a censorship and filtering instrument. Nonetheless, the new EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (“DSM Directive”) follows this path and requires the employment of automated filtering tools to ensure that unauthorized protected content does not populate UGC platforms. The new EU rules on UGC licensing and screening will inevitably lead to the adoption of algorithmic enforcement measures in practice. Without automated content control, UGC platforms will be unable to escape liability for infringing user uploads. To provide a complete picture, however, it is important to also shed light on counterbalances which may distinguish this new, institutionalized form of algorithmic enforcement from known content filtering tools that have evolved as voluntary measures in the private sector. The DSM Directive underlines the necessity to safeguard user freedoms that support transformative, creative remixes and mash-ups of pre-existing content. This feature of the new legislation may offer important incentives to develop algorithmic tools that go beyond the mere identification of unauthorized takings from protected works. It has the potential to encourage content assessment mechanisms that factor the degree of transformative effort and user creativity into the equation. As a result, more balanced content filtering tools may emerge in the EU. Against this background, the analysis shows that the new EU legislation not only escalates the use of algorithmic enforcement measures that already commenced in the private sector years ago. If rightly implemented, it may also add an important nuance to existing content identification tools and alleviate the problems arising from reliance on automated filtering mechanisms.

The International Copyright Laws and South Africa Copyright Act: Implications on the African National Congress Liberation Archives Digitization (1960–1990)

The aim of this study is to discuss the importance of understanding international copyright laws as it relates to the digitization of records created in different countries and operating under different laws. It will also present empirical research findings on compliance with the principles of copyright- related to the digitization of the African National Congress Archives, such as, the international copyright laws or the South Africa Copyright Act (No. 98 of 1978). The paper used a qualitative method that allowed the triangulation of data collection methods or enhanced reliability and validity of the research finding. Interview data was augmented through interviews, document analysis and observation. The findings revealed that the African National Congress (ANC) adhered to some of the principles of copyright law during the digitization process. The study concludes that any organization that embarked on the digitization project must comply with copyright legislation. Furthermore, the implementation of digitization requires partnerships between project owners and technological companies.

Institutionalized Algorithmic Enforcement—The Pros and Cons of the EU Approach to UGC Platform Liability

Algorithmic copyright enforcement – the use of automated filtering tools to detect infringing content before it appears on the internet – has a deep impact on the freedom of users to upload and share information. Instead of presuming that user-generated content (UGC) does not amount to infringement unless copyright owners take action and provide proof, the default position of automated filtering systems is that every upload is suspicious and that copyright owners are entitled to ex ante control over the sharing of information online. If platform providers voluntarily introduce algorithmic enforcement measures, this may be seen as a private decision following from the freedom of companies to run their business as they wish. If, however, copyright legislation institutionalizes algorithmic enforcement and imposes a legal obligation on platform providers to employ automated filtering tools, the law itself transforms copyright into a censorship and filtering instrument. Nonetheless, the new EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (“DSM Directive”) follows this path and requires the employment of automated filtering tools to ensure that unauthorized protected content does not populate UGC platforms. The new EU rules on UGC licensing and screening will inevitably lead to the adoption of algorithmic enforcement measures in practice. Without automated content control, UGC platforms will be unable to escape liability for infringing user uploads. To provide a complete picture, however, it is important to also shed light on counterbalances which may distinguish this new, institutionalized form of algorithmic enforcement from known content filtering tools that have evolved as voluntary measures in the private sector. The DSM Directive underlines the necessity to safeguard user freedoms that support transformative, creative remixes and mash-ups of pre-existing content. This feature of the new legislation may offer important incentives to develop algorithmic tools that go beyond the mere identification of unauthorized takings from protected works. It has the potential to encourage content assessment mechanisms that factor the degree of transformative effort and user creativity into the equation. As a result, more balanced content filtering tools may emerge in the EU. Against this background, the analysis shows that the new EU legislation not only escalates the use of algorithmic enforcement measures that already commenced in the private sector years ago. If rightly implemented, it may also add an important nuance to existing content identification tools and alleviate the problems arising from reliance on automated filtering mechanisms.

Version Recording: A Review of Indian Legislation

With the current copyright legislation in the country mainly through the 2012 amendment of the Copyright Act, one needs either explicit consent or appropriate license so as to make a version recording of a copyrighted song in public. However, there have been a series of litigations in India concerning the provisions under the Copyright law allowing version recording of musical work. This paper discusses and examines the origin of version recording and its impact on music industry also it examines the law relating to version recording rights in the light of contemporary trends in the Indian music industry.

An Old Law for a New Literature: Authors, Publishers and the Early Years of the Victorian Copyright Act 1869

This article analyses the early years of the operation of copyright legislation in the colony of Victoria, Australia. The Copyright Act 1869 (Vic) was introduced into a thriving but volatile colonial literary marketplace. The law was based almost wholly on the UK law at the time, existing in a very different environment. This article notes that despite the rhetoric of the protection of the right of authors as an aim of the law, the effect was something quite different. We examine the use of copyright by some key players in that colonial market, both publishers and authors. That analysis reveals that the prophetic words of George Higinbotham, that the law was not for the protection of the author, but the publisher, can be demonstrated to be true. This is evident both in the implementation of the law itself and in a number of inconsistencies in its operation. We conclude that, despite public and parliamentary rhetoric drawing on the romantic conception of the author as creator, the law’s conception of the author as proprietor offered little protection to local Australian authors writing new literature for a new country.

Saving online copyright: Virtual markets need real intervention

AbstractThe internet is a treasure chest of infringing or “pirated” entertainment media, which viewers from around the world access, copy, and share with relative ease. Data and qualitative reviews suggest infringement is ubiquitous in the streaming and downloading domain. The current approach to copyright enforcement places undue burdens on copyright owners who cannot economically advance claims against millions of individual users. Poorly constructed copyright laws and misguided Court decisions have left rights‐holders with too few remedies against commercial entities involved in the storage, retrieval, transmission, access, and streaming of their works. A five‐year exploratory and observational study were conducted to discover facts about online pirate media, how services function, how companies make money, and how they skirt around laws prohibiting unauthorized commercial exploitation of copyright. Sites discovered had multimillion‐dollar valuations and annual revenues, mostly derived from third‐party advertisements. The study found numerous deficiencies in copyright legislation and judicial interpretation that enable massive online infringement to continue. Recommendations include statutory and regulatory amendments, judicial reversals, reconstruction of the law, and development of a binding, compulsory mechanism similar to Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ domain name trademark dispute resolution system.

John Willinsky. The Intellectual Properties of Learning: A Prehistory from Saint Jerome to John Locke. xiv + 368 pp., bibl., index. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2018. $40 (cloth). ISBN 9780226487922.

In 1710 the British Parliament enacted the Statute of Anne, the first copyright legislation that invested specified legal rights in owners of literary property. This gave protection to authors in the form of a privilege to control the printing of copies for fourteen years after the first edition, with the option of renewal for the same period. Its title included “the Encouragement of Learning” (pp. 7–8) as a desideratum, a provision that resonates with John Willinsky’s own advocacy of open access in the digital era. In contrast, the rationale of the previous Licensing Act of 1662 was control of heresy and sedition, although it did require a copy of every book to be sent to designated “public” libraries (p. 250) such as those of the two universities, an arrangement initiated by Thomas Bodley for Oxford from 1610.

Authorship and Originality in Seventeenth‐Century Iberia: Faria e Sousa’s Rimas Várias de Luís de Camoens

AbstractManuel de Faria e Sousa’s Rimas Varias de Luis de Camoens (1685–88) continues to be the most influential edition of and scholarly work on Camões’s lyric oeuvre. While his attributions have been widely debated (and many disproved), the reasons Faria e Sousa puts forward for them have received only cursory attention. The commentator’s strikingly psychological explanations for ascribing texts to Camões suggest unexpected ways in which lyric authorship could be conceptualised in the seventeenth century. How he deals with the proliferation of texts in manuscript miscellanies illuminates where the line lay between variants, poorly concealed plagiarism, and entirely new poems – in other words, what makes a poem original. Faria e Sousa’s edition points to a prehistory of claims to author’s rights and authorial originality before the introduction of copyright legislation and highlights the role that editors played in the construction of modern authorship, suggesting they might be as possessive of texts, if not more so, than writers themselves.

Professional Ethics, Copyright Legislation and the Case for Collective Copyright Disobedience in Libraries

ABSTRACTAustralian library and information science (LIS) professionals face conflicting legal and ethical obligations in relation to copyright. As law-abiding citizens, they have a legal duty to adhere to the Australian Copyright Act 1968. However, as LIS professionals, they are expected to uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and access of information as outlined by the code of conducts of professional associations such as the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) and the American Library Association (ALA). This article explores the paradoxical relationship between copyright compliance and LIS’s professional ethics. A comparison between the Australian Copyright Act 1968 and core LIS values reveals that legislative guidelines contradict the aims and principles of the LIS profession. Consequently, a case can be made for collective copyright disobedience within the LIS profession. Collective acts of copyright disobedience such as online piracy and the Freedom of Access to Information and Resources (FAIR)’s Cooking for Copyright campaign have influenced major copyright reforms and the advent of new scholarly communication models. Based on these results, it can be argued that collective copyright disobedience by LIS professionals is not only justified, but necessary to fulfilling professional and ethical responsibilities.

Tekijänoikeuksien monet puolet

Copyright literacy in Finnish libraries, archives and museums was studied by a web survey as part of a multinational research. The questionnaire was answered at least partly by 274 and completely by 156 informants who mostly were experienced professionals. The study focused on the awareness of national and international copyright legislation and institutions, regulations concerning different aspects of copyright, and sources of copyright information that the respondents would use. They were moderately well aware of national legislation and copyright institutions, open data and open access, while international regulations were less familiar. The results in many respects corresponds with those of an international survey concerning 13 countries. The most important information sources concerning copyright were the internet, colleagues, books and articles. The informants suggested a great variety of copyright issues for contents of future education, and especially wished for instruction on how to apply legislation in practical cases.

Violations in the field of copyright: incorrect citation and plagiarism

The paper addresses common violations of copyright law: incorrect (un­lawful) citation and plagiarism. These violations have certain common features, but the author’s paper aims to differentiate them through comparison; investigates indi­vidual problem issues arising when quoting, which can lead to violations or when identifying unlawful borrowings (plagiarism); analyses national legislation and inter­national documents that have been ratified by Ukraine or to which Ukraine has joined, as well as judicial practice.The results obtained indicate that incorrect (unlawful) citation includes: non-com­pliance with the requirements of the citation volume; quoting small volumes works without respecting good customs; citing works that were unlawfully published; use of quotations in scientific works without observance of the general rules of citation; use of quotations without informational, critical, polemical, scientific purpose; wrongful, unlawful or incorrect author indication of the borrowed excerpt or sours of borrowing. While plagiarism is: not indicating the name of the author and the use of a passage of someone else's work under one’s own name, or when the author who borrowed the passage indicates the name of the person, except his own name, who is not the author of this work or a part thereof. Plagiarism is the appropriation of others' creative activ­ity results, while the incorrect (unlawful) quotation only violates the limits and condi­tions of permissible free use of others works established by the current legislation.In the author’s paper provides a general theoretical and practical characteristic of each individual case of making incorrect (unlawful) citation and plagiarism; indicates that incorrect (unlawful) citation and plagiarism may lead to a violation of personal non-proprietary and exclusively property rights of the author, human rights or acade­mic integrity, and therefore require special attention in indicating these offences and in conducting further research. In addition, it should be remembered that non-compli­ance with certain requirements of the legislation concerning conditions for the free use of quotations does not imply violation by the author of copyright legislation. In ad­dition, there are cases of involuntary plagiarism, which can not be considered a viola­tion of copyright.Therefore, despite the considerable amount of scientific works devoted to prevent­ing and detecting plagiarism, as well as adherence to the conditions for the free use of quotations, the issue of differentiation of incorrect (unlawful) citation and plagiarism is rather controversial and relevant. The author draws attention to the fact that the solution of the matter whether the work contains plagiarism or incorrect (unlawful) quotation is solely imposed on the competence of the court based on the expert's con­clusion. In order to eliminate possible differences in the practical application of the rules governing the use of others' creative results for one’s own creative work, it is ap­propriate to develop common guidelines that can be applied both in the academic en­vironment and in the arts, in view of ensuring a private and public balance of inter­ests. This will create a solid foundation for further cultural, scientific, innovative, artistic development of the country.

The admissible amount of borrowings as a problem of organization of research work and of quality control

The aim of the research . The determination of the permissible amount of non-original text in the automated verification of scientific documents for plagiarism has become a new, but already common phenomenon in Russia. The experience with the use of threshold values shows that it may have different effects on the final quality of such documents and therefore needs special consideration. The purpose of the article is to study the positive and negative consequences of using the allowable amount of borrowing. Methods and materials. Studying local normative acts, issued by national higher education institutions and the analysis of the results of anti-plagiarism tests carried out at the Russian State Library for research documents revealed certain peculiarities of application of the “threshold levels”. The results. The “threshold levels” usage would doubtlessly simplify the treatment of the plagiarism test results. In addition, authors of research works obtain a certain stimulus to more careful and thorough work over their papers, lecturers and academic advisors could detect compilation texts far easier than ever before. Meanwhile different organizations set different frames for volumes of borrowings when the same type of research work being considered, and there can be found no grounds related to the branches of science. The introduction of the restrictions on the amount of borrowing does not change the current Copyright legislation of the Russian Federation, nor does it make plagiarism legitimate. In that respect a matter of a particular importance turns out to explain to students and postgraduates the main principles of scientific ethics and of the specific features of the plagiarism tests. A significant negative consequence of using the allowable amount of borrowing is that in different organizations the same text can be evaluated quite differently. The diversity of concepts of the admissible amount of borrowings makes it hard to compare the results of the plagiarism tests carried out at different establishments and determining a final level for the text quality. The admissible amount of borrowings would often correspond to the demand to quote other publications in the volumes justified by the aims of the quotation. The problems emerge when the number of the correct quotations satisfies the demand but their total volume exceeds the set frames. Another possible problem comes when the part of the borrowings fits those frames while the appropriateness of quotations remains questionable. The data on the borrowed volumes received by the primary computer plagiarism test cannot be considered objective if the volume of text taken by one author from another one’s work is viewed. To detect the degree of borrowings (either correct or incorrect) the report of the system on each of the documents is to be verified by the specialist. Since the year of 2009, the Russian State Library (RSL) has carried out over 4,000 plagiarism tests with usage of specialized software “Antiplagiat.RSL”. Documents were compared to the texts of the sources of the Digital Dissertation Library of the RSL, and the results of the tests revealed diverse forms of plagiarism. Conclusion. The organizational and methodological problems accompanying application of restrictions for borrowings remain unsolved for the moment. In addition, irrespective of the character of those restrictions the conclusion concerning the scientific value and the legitimacy of the research paper is to be made by the members of the academic community, not by the information systems.

History and Main Trends in the Development of Copyright

The article defines the history, development trends and some problematic provisions of copyright law. The relevance of the study is caused by the tendency to tighten copyright legislation. The purpose of the study is to explore the genesis of the institute of copyright and its modern state. Among the objectives set to achieve this objective there is identifying the causes and features of the legal regulation of authorship in different countries, analyzing the activities of global organizations that control the main international agreements in the area under study, identifying the main problems of the sphere, explaining their causes and offering a solution. The study provides various scientific perspectives on legal instruments for regulating the sphere. The domestic, foreign and international regulatory framework for creative results is analyzed. The reasons, origins of this institution and the prospects for further development are raised. The nature of the institution of copyright and the comparison of its development in different countries are identified. The essential conditions for the appearance of copyright in a given country are indicated. As a result of the study, the overall status of the studied area is summarized. The results of the study of different views on the mentioned problems are presented, and solutions to address the scientific and social interests are proposed. The scientific novelty and significance of this study are that the copyright institute is considered in the article as unique in nature and originally English phenomenon served to the creation of an autonomous world legislative network dictating further conditions for the participating countries.

Colonial Copyright Redux: 1709 vs. 1832

The study of colonialism shows us that the law often serves the needs and interests of both the Imperial power and the subjugated country. Concessions are necessary to rule a conquered population. In order to understand Canadian law and the measure of Imperial influence, one must understand the dialogue between the various legal traditions. This essay will examine legal transplants in a historical and colonial context. It will begin with a brief review of Canadian history in order to understand the evolution of Canadian copyright law. It will focus on the creation and significance of Canada’s first copyright legislation. Using the Statute of Anne as a reference point, this essay will describe the evolution of Canadian copyright law on its journey to self-determination during the 18th and 19th centuries. More specifically, this essay will explore the influence of the 1709 Statute of Anne on the 1832 colonial Acte pour proteger la propriete intellectuelle. It will argue that the influence of the Statute of Anne as an expression of the Canadianess of Canadian copyright policy is not to be found in the text of 1832. It can be found in the small prints of the numerous bills and amendments proposed to the English Parliament, in those provisions buried in the text which triggered an open war between Canadian, American and English publishers and stigmatized by the 1847 Foreign Reprints Act. It is in the context of the 1847 piece that the influence of the Statue of Anne and its monopolistic or imperialistic effects can be fully grasped.

Mahler and ‘The Newspaper Company’: A Newly Discovered Contract

In the early 1890s Mahler’s attempts to interest the German music publisher, B. Schott’s Söhne, in his large-scale works proved fruitless and the owner, Dr Ludwig Strecker, was content to publish a collection of songs, the 14 Lieder und Gesänge. Even for a major firm, with ample opportunity to use income from popular works to cross-subsidize more costly and risky ventures, the publication of new, innovative symphonies was unattractive. For Mahler one temporary solution emerged unexpectedly thanks to two Hamburg patrons who funded both the performance and publication of his Second Symphony.However, this was hardly a satisfactory arrangement, as no orchestral parts were printed, and it was only thanks to the intervention of an old friend, Guido Adler, that Mahler finally saw his first four symphonies, Das klagende Lied and the Wunderhorn songs, published in practical and performable editions. The firm that undertook this large-scale project was not primarily a music publisher at all, but a printing company, the Erste Wiener Zeitungs Gesellschaft, and until recently the details of its agreement with Mahler were unknown. With the discovery in 2014 of a manuscript draft of the firm’s contract with Mahler this important step in the dissemination of Mahler’s music can be better understood.The article presents a transcription and translation of the draft contract, and a commentary, drawing on other published and unpublished primary sources, that seeks to set the document in the wider contexts of the history of music publishing in Vienna and of the Erste Wiener Zeitungs Gesellschaft in particular, Austrian copyright legislation, and the publication of Mahler’s music.

The future of Heritage Science and Technologies from a legal point of view

The development and the prospect of future cultural heritage should certainly be confronted with the development of new technologies applied to the arts which, from a legal point of view, implies mainly three important aspects.1. Copyrights for software : this seems to be the least interesting for the jurists as many aspects have already been addressed and solved, and therefore on will just quickly list some of them. In fact the copyright explicitely protects the software as work of wit and consequently it is clear that the author is the dominus of his creation in the sense that he is the only person who can decide how to allow other people use his software. So f.e. the relationship between the copyright legislation and open source is actually less difficult than it maybe thought. In addition open source use is fully regulated by Law no. 633/1941 (so called “legge sul diritto d’autore”) which guarantees its proper use.2. Legal issues related to the so-called BIM technology : Building Information Modelling (BIM) is a software for plannig and implementing building projects based on 3D modeling of buildings or structures models. The BIM has already been adopted internationally for the realization of major project and one of the most exciting challenges for a lawyer is to develop a specific BIM contract for the particular field of art and cultural heritage.3. Legal issues related to artificial intelligence : this certainly represents a field yet to be discovered by jurists and here I will present a series of legal concerns that will engage jurists in the coming years. Such as responsibility and ethics of artificial intelligence. For the above-mentioned considerations, the European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee approved a report calling on the European Commission to introduce a set of regulations on robotics.

Essay - How Copyright Got a Bad Name For Itself

Over the last several years, copyrighted works have come to account for a healthy portion of our GNP, and an even more substantial share of U.S. exports. Nonetheless, copyright is in bad odor these days. Many of the developments over the last years designed to protect copyright have drawn academic scorn, and intolerance even from the popular press. I have a theory about how copyright got a bad name for itself, and I can summarize it in one word: Greed. Corporate greed and consumer greed. Copyright owners, generally perceived to be large, impersonal and unlovable corporations (the human creators and interpreters - authors and performers - albeit often initial copyright owners, tend to vanish from polemical view), have eyed enhanced prospects for global earnings in an increasingly international copyright market. Accordingly, they have urged and obtained ever more protective legislation, that extends the term of copyright and interferes with the development and dissemination of consumer-friendly copying technologies. Greed, of course, runs both ways. Consumers, for their part, have exhibited an increasing rapacity in acquiring and sharing unauthorized copies of music, and more recently, motion pictures. Copyright owners' attempts to tame technology notwithstanding, at least some of the general senses as illegitimate any law, or more particularly, any enforcement that gets in the way of what people can do with their own equipment in their own homes (or dorm rooms). Worse, they would decry this enforcement as a threat to the Constitutional goal of promotion of the Progress of Science, and thus a threat to the interest. In this formulation, the public is doing a lot of work, not all of it persuasive. The public does not mean the personal interest of members of the in getting works of authorship without paying for them. This is as much a perversion of the Constitutional copyright clause as is the anthropomorphically nonsensical, but infinitely self-serving, adage Information wants to be free. But neither is every legal protective measure that a copyright owner urges in the name of authors' Constitutional interest in securing . . . the exclusive Right to their . . . Writings a guarantor of the Progress of Science. In fact, the public in a balanced copyright system that provides meaningful incentives to first authors, while allowing second authors room to build on their predecessors' endeavors, as well as reasonable leeway for autonomous consumer enjoyment, has come in for considerable battering by both copyright owners and users. This Essay does not attempt a comprehensive review of recent U.S. copyright legislation and caselaw. Instead, it offers an analytical framework that will allow me to be both informative and opinionated. I propose first to expose some examples of the kind of copyright owner overreaching that has correctly given copyright a bad name. I then will argue that not all the bad publicity is deserved. Rather, much of the last years' legislation and caselaw, instead of overreaching, appropriately reaches out to address new problems prompted by new technologies, so as to strike a happier balance between copyright owner, intermediary, and end-user interests (or greeds). This in turn will permit our legal system to continue to afford a hospitable environment for the creation and dissemination of works of authorship, to the ultimate enrichment of the public.

Copyright Use and Excuse on the Internet

1998 ended with voluminous copyright legislation, pompously titled the Digital Millennium Copyright Act [DMCA], and intended to equip the copyright law to meet the challenges of online digital exploitation of works of authorship. 1999 and 2000 have brought some of the ensuing confrontations between copyright owners and Internet entrepreneurs to the courts. The evolving caselaw affords an initial opportunity to assess whether the copyright law as abundantly amended can indeed respond to digital networks, or whether the rapid development of the Internet inevitably outstrips Congress' and the courts' attempts to keep pace. This Article addresses recent Internet-related controversies concerning technological protection measures and copyright management information; fair use and linking; private copying online services; and choice of law issues posed by foreign websites accessible in the U.S. The Internet copyright cases this Article examines call not only for interpretation of the provisions of the DMCA, but also for application of principles developed in pre-DMCA cases involving digital media and digital networks. What may make the current controversies different is the intensity of their impact on end-users. While the defendants in the current cases are generally, albeit not exclusively, commercial intermediaries, many of the practices here at issue pose the prospect of mass uncompensated copying by the public. Hence the feeling of desperation and even moral outrage that one senses pervades many of the copyright owners' actions. From the user perspective, digital media offer unparalleled opportunities to access and enjoy copyrighted works; copyright owners' endeavors to staunch the free (as in unpaid) flow of works are misguided attempts to stop the inexorable forward march of technology for the sake of preserving mastodontic business models of distribution. Certainly the Internet will compel adoption of new business models, and the sooner copyright owners adapt, the better. The tools the DMCA and copyright caselaw give copyright owners to confront copyright use on the Internet should be employed to promote broad distribution of works of authorship at reasonable, and variable, prices. If copyright owners instead wield these tools to enhance control without facilitating dissemination, we can expect to see courts expand the zones of excused uses, whether or not the excuses are doctrinally persuasive. Copyright owners cannot, and should not, control every Internet use, but neither should every use prompt an excuse, lest we undermine the ability of copyright owners, and especially of individual creators, to make a living from their creativity.

Enforceability of foreign copyright in Nigeria: a review of the Court of Appeal’s decision in Microsoft v Franike

With globalization and the rise of information and communications technology (ICT), the protection of intellectual protection in software and indeed foreign copyright has never been more paramount. The absence of statutory provisions in Nigeria’s main copyright legislation specifically protecting the intellectual protection in software has not helped. This article examines the Court of Appeal’s recent decision dealing with the protection of copyright in Microsoft’s software. The author is of the considered view that the approach adopted by the courts in the case is not in the overall interest of encouraging foreign ICT companies and the protection of foreign copyrights in Nigeria.

Rise of the API Copyright Dead?: An Updated Epitaph for Copyright Protection of Network and Functional Features of Computer Software

After a decade of bruising legal battles, the courts and software industry norms largely resolved the costly war over the scope of copyright protection for computer software. By the mid 1990s, freedom to develop interoperable devices, systems, and software triumphed over broad copyright protection for network features of computer software. Copyright peace prevailed throughout the software industry for the next 15 years. But in 2010, Oracle reignited the smoldering embers of that war when it brought suit alleging that Google infringed copyright in the Java application program interface packages (APIs)... This article updates and expands upon an earlier “epitaph” for copyright protection of network features of computer software to address the second API copyright wave. As background, Part I reviews the first wave of API copyright legislation and litigation. Part II examines the Oracle v. Google litigation, tracing the development of Java and Android and the subsequent (and still ongoing) battle over the scope of copyright protection for APIs. Part III critically analyzes the Oracle v. Google decisions. It explains that copyright law’s fundamental exclusion of protection for functional features dictates that the labeling conventions and packaging of functions within interface specifications generally fall outside of the scope of copyright protection even as implementing code garners thin copyright protection. This interpretation of copyright law comports with fundamental principles channeling protection among the modes of intellectual property. It also serves the larger goals of intellectual property law and competition policy.