Strong Copyright Protection Research Articles

Cultural Policy and the Sustainable Development of 12-Episode Web Series in China: Monetization, Copyright, and Global Expansion

China’s web series market has rapidly transformed entertainment, offering interactive experiences distinct from traditional film and television. Despite its rapid growth, the industry faces key challenges in monetization, copyright protection, and international distribution. This study explores how current policies shape the sustainable development of Chinese web series, supporting growth while imposing constraints. Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews with creators and audiences and analyzed using content analysis. A novel coding approach was used, combining traditional manual methods with advanced large language model (LLM) assistance to uncover detailed insights. Applying Tony Bennett’s cultural policy theory (2001), the findings reveal that although government policies have supported market expansion, they also pose challenges—particularly for independent creators—due to limited monetization channels, insufficient copyright protection, and restrictive regulations on content. Audience feedback shows a strong willingness to pay for high-quality web series, yet free and pirated content options continue to undermine paid models. To navigate these complexities, the study recommends policy reforms that encourage market diversity, stronger copyright protection through digital technologies, and greater support for cross-cultural collaborations to expand global reach. Striking a balance between regulation and creative freedom is crucial for driving the sustainable growth of China’s web series industry.

PENGEMBANGAN INDUSTRI KALIGRAFI: PELUANG DAN TANTANGAN MENINGKATKAN EKONOMI UMAT ISLAM

The Islamic calligraphy industry has great potential to improve the economy of Muslims through various forms of commercialization and cultural preservation. The main opportunities include the art and collection market, education and training, as well as the development of creative industries with the application of calligraphy to design and digitalization products. Apart from that, cultural and religious tourism that utilizes calligraphy can attract tourists and improve the local economy. However, the industry faces challenges such as lack of financial support, difficulties in accessing global markets, copyright protection issues, and a lack of adequate education and training. Strategies to overcome these challenges include increased financial support, stronger copyright protection, better education and training, and the use of digital technology. With the right approach, the calligraphy industry can develop rapidly and contribute significantly to the Muslim economy.

Reconceptualizing Nigerian Copyright Law to Protect Nollywood

Reconceptualizing Nigerian Copyright Law to Protect Nollywood

Internet freedom and copyright maximalism: Contradictory hypocrisy or complementary policies?

ABSTRACTU.S. advocacy for increased international intellectual property protection and a free and open Internet has been criticized as being inconsistent at best and hypocritical at worst. Placing U.S. copyright and Internet policy in a historical context and using Susan Strange's concepts of structural power and knowledge structures, we argue that copyright and Internet policies cannot be analyzed in isolation, but are intimately and inextricably linked forms of knowledge regulation. All knowledge regulation policies involve balancing access and restriction. Our analysis suggests that the current U.S. policy of Internet freedom and strong copyright protection represents a particular, historically situated strategy designed to exert structural power in the global information economy: Free flow of information creates markets by exposure to intellectual properties, while copyright secures economic benefit to copyright holders from the flow. We argue that a full and honest debate over issues of information access requires acknowledgment of contemporary and conflicting values, with the realization that different societies and interests will weigh access and dissemination differently. Recognizing as legitimate and incorporating these different perspectives into the global governance structures of the Internet comprise the key challenge facing those who favor truly democratic global Internet governance.

Wikipedia's Economic Value

In the copyright policy debate, proponents of strong copyright protection tend to be dismissive of the quality of freely available content. In response to counter-examples such as open access scholarly publications and advertising-supported business models (e.g., newspaper websites and the over-the-air television broadcasts viewed by 50 million Americans), the strong copyright proponents center their attack on amateur content. In this narrative, YouTube is for cat videos and Wikipedia is a wildly unreliable source of information.Recent studies, however, indicate that the volunteer-written and -edited Wikipedia is no less reliable than professionally edited encyclopedias such as the Encyclopedia Britannica. Moreover, Wikipedia has far broader coverage. Britannica, which discontinued its print edition in 2012 and now appears only online, contains 120,000 articles, all in English. Wikipedia, by contrast, has 4.3 million articles in English and a total of 22 million articles in 285 languages. Wikipedia attracts more than 470 million unique visitors a month who view over 19 billion pages. According to Alexa, it is the sixth most visited website in the world.Wikipedia, therefore, is a shining example of valuable content created by non-professionals. Is there a way to measure the economic value of this content? Because Wikipedia is created by volunteers, is administered by a non-profit foundation, and is distributed for free, the normal means of measuring value — such as revenue, market capitalization, and book value — do not directly apply. Nonetheless, there are a variety of methods for estimating its value in terms of its market value, its replacement cost, and the value it creates for its users. These methods suggest a valuation in the tens of billions of dollars, a one-time replacement cost of $6.6 billion with an annual updating cost of $630 million, and consumer benefit in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

From Author's Right to Property Right

Though copyright is usually categorized as a property right, efforts to justify copyright on other grounds have persisted since the eighteenth century. The Lockean defence, based on the author's labour, is usually seen as conducive to a property right but is sometimes linked instead (or in addition) to a personality right. I explore another approach that has been analysed in the doctrinal literature, but that has received less attention from historians of English copyright law. This approach focuses on the author's dignitary rights, including communicative rights (bearing on who controls the public presentation of the text), and reputational rights (bearing on the text's appearance and its status as a reflection of the author). By contrast with the labour theory, the dignitary view of copyright is harder to reconcile with a property right although, as I show, eighteenth-century advocates of strong copyright protection sought to assimilate this view into the property framework. The Statute of Anne (1710) sought to accommodate the competing needs of authors, publishers, and the public. Its protections did not affiliate copyright with a property framework, as the publishing industry would have liked. In the course of the eighteenth century, dignitary concerns jostled with property claims as litigants argued over statutory protection. To explore the relations among these arguments, I re-examine the Statute of Anne and four of the major contemporary copyright judgments: Burnet v Chetwood (1721), Pope v Curll (1741), Millar v Taylor (1769) and Donaldson v Becket (1774). Each of these cases reveals new dimensions when examined through the lens of dignitary concerns. By studying these materials, we can gain a better understanding of how the property-based view took hold during a vital period in the formation of copyright law. This development, in turn, helps to explain two of the most distinctive features in the recent history of copyright law: the ever-widening reach of derivative rights and the ever-lengthening term of protection.

From author’s right to property right

Though copyright is usually categorized as a property right, efforts to justify copyright on other grounds have persisted since the eighteenth century. The Lockean defence, based on the author’s labour, is usually seen as conducive to a property right but is sometimes linked instead (or in addition) to a personality right. I explore another approach that has been analysed in the doctrinal literature, but that has received less attention from historians of English copyright law. This approach focuses on the author’s dignitary rights, including communicative rights (bearing on who controls the public presentation of the text), and reputational rights (bearing on the text’s appearance and its status as a reflection of the author). By contrast with the labour theory, the dignitary view of copyright is harder to reconcile with a property right although, as I show, eighteenth-century advocates of strong copyright protection sought to assimilate this view into the property framework. The Statute of Anne (1710) sought to accommodate the competing needs of authors, publishers, and the public. Its protections did not affiliate copyright with a property framework, as the publishing industry would have liked. In the course of the eighteenth century, dignitary concerns jostled with property claims as litigants argued over statutory protection. To explore the relations among these arguments, I re-examine the Statute of Anne and four of the major contemporary copyright judgments: Burnet v Chetwood (1721), Pope v Curll (1741), Millar v Taylor (1769) and Donaldson v Becket (1774). Each of these cases reveals new dimensions when examined through the lens of dignitary concerns. By studying these materials, we can gain a better understanding of how the property-based view took hold during a vital period in the formation of copyright law. This development, in turn, helps to explain two of the most distinctive features in the recent history of copyright law: the ever-widening reach of derivative rights and the ever-lengthening term of protection.

The potential impact of digital rights management on the Indian entertainment industry

For India, having being endowed with a rich heritage of art and culture, copyright is perceived to offer potential rewards. The entertainment industry is one of the fastest growing sectors in the Indian economy. At present, India is not a signatory to the WIPO Internet Treaties, but the government has proposed amendments to the extant legislation to incorporate Digital Rights Management (DRM) as enshrined in them. Conventionally the western entertainment industry has viewed DRM as an important tool to combat piracy pervasive on the internet. DRM involves the application of a set of technical and legal mechanisms that allow copyright owners to control the access to their works, determine the types of permissible uses and terms of such uses and the ultimate distribution of their works in the digital world. With the growing popularity of Indian cinema abroad, the entertainment industry is attracting increasing foreign investment, is gradually being corporatised and thus it is felt that such investments need to be protected. DRM is considered to be one of the solutions as it prevents loss due to unlimited unauthorized reproduction of works, introduces more effective market segmentation and promotes the incentive to create, facilitating the maximum exploitation of works in the digital world. However, for India, a developing economy, such a path is to be treaded with caution. DRM is an extra‐statutory measure, with perceived potential impact on consumer privacy, innovation and limiting legitimate exceptions. A unique feature of the industry is that it is an extension of its dynamic indigenous folk and classical cultural tradition where the emphasis has been on adaptation and improvisation, drawing upon works in the public domain. Some experts observe that DRM poses a threat to such a tradition by artificially restricting the public domain.This paper explores the likely impact of the proposed introduction of the DRM provisions in the Indian Copyright Act, 1957 with its focus on Bollywood and the related music sector. Given the tension surrounding DRM, this paper examines the aforementioned issues, taking into consideration the promotion of the underlying objectives of copyright law. Noting that the case for strong copyright protection as a key for innovation is highly debatable, this paper argues that India should keep in mind the flexibilities under law as provided by various international treaties and in technology before adopting the DRM approach.

News and Notes/Nouvelles et Notes

Canadian Library Association (CLA) moves open access 137 Congressional panel favors access to publicly funded research 137 Google scan plan expands, gaining 12 Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) libraries 137 Balancing author and publisher rights 138 Microsoft adds copyrighted books to online library 138 Elsevier ditches arms trade 138 Bush administration pushes for stronger copyright protection, enforcement 139 Response of the presidents of Canada’s three granting agencies to the Government of Canada’s announcement on the new science and technology strategy 139

Piracy, Price Discrimination, and Development: The Software Sector in Eastern Europe and Other Emerging Markets

The strengthening of intellectual property regimes in Eastern Europe and other emerging markets has failed to deliver on the much-touted promises of increasing high-technology foreign investment and faster development of homegrown information-intensive industrial sectors, especially with respect to the software industry. Considering the economics of developing and marketing software products, local programmers have little to gain from stronger copyright protection in their domestic markets, and this situation is not likely to change soon. The technological level of foreign investment and its global pattern (advanced research and development in the core, unsophisticated and low margin work in the periphery) is also unaffected by the local level of copyright protection. At the same time, piracy has turned out to be a necessary evil for the diffusion of software that is legally priced beyond the reach of most local users. Price discrimination could have provided a solution for this conundrum, but there are important economic and political factors that support the status quo, although the much-feared parallel imports are less of a problem than expected. Nevertheless, there are significant technological and cultural developments that should make the actors involved less comfortable about the status quo. These problems clearly require more innovative thinking. Open source software is likely to be a significant part of the answer, but the implementation of this solution will require serious efforts to change the approach of governments in developing countries and the international organizations involved in development assistance.

Copyright, Control and Comics: Japanese Battles Over Downstream Limits on Content

Over the past decade, a national battle has raged over how much downstream control copyright holders should have over their products once they are sold to distributors, retailers and consumers. By and large, consumers seem to have won this battle as legal change and business innovation eroded downstream limits. Copyright holders have been unsuccessful in their attempts to roll back this erosion, and indeed have been further hampered by judges and antitrust enforcers who have bolstered the trend. This nation is not the United States; it is Japan. Despite strenuous objections by authors and publishers, the expansion of what Japanese consumers can do with the copyrighted comics they buy threatens to reshape the $5 billion domestic industry. For Americans, the Japanese experience is instructive in several ways. Unlike the American debate regarding downstream controls, the Japanese battle has not involved actual or alleged illicit copying. Instead, it appears that gains from price discrimination are motivating authors and the publishing industry. Additionally, a change in transaction costs made possible by business innovation appears to have undercut the ability of publishers to tailor prices. Also of significant interest, the erosion in downstream control has coincided with stunning growth of the Japanese comic medium as a worldwide export, a notable contradiction to the common assertion of the U.S. copyright industry that stronger copyright protection must necessarily yield more creativity.

Software Development and Trade: Role of Contract Enforcement and Copyright Protection

We develop a model to study the implications of a legal environment on software development and international trade. We show that the degree of contract enforcement affects the organizational mode (i.e., in-house versus outsourcing) of customized software development. In autarky, a country with weak copyright protection develops customized software only, while a country with strong copyright protection develops both customized software and packaged software. After opening to trade, the strong-copyright-protecting country exports packaged software and the weak-copyright-protecting country exports customized software. enforcement, vertical integration, contract, pattern of trade

Computer Programs and Copyright: More Exceptions to Infringement

The Modern Law ReviewVolume 56, Issue 4 p. 591-599 Free Access Computer Programs and Copyright: More Exceptions to Infringement David I. Bainbridge, David I. Bainbridge Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham.Search for more papers by this author David I. Bainbridge, David I. Bainbridge Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham.Search for more papers by this author First published: July 1993 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1993.tb01891.xCitations: 1 AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume56, Issue4July 1993Pages 591-599 RelatedInformation

Copyright Protection of Letters, Diaries, and Other Unpublished Works: An Economic Approach

ONE Of the more controversial questions in copyright law today concerns the proper scope of protection for unpublished works, such as letters, diaries, journals, reports, or drafts that the copyright owner may publish in the future. The question is not whether such works are copyrightable, for they surely are. Rather, it is whether such works should be given, as they are today, stronger copyright protection than published or widely disseminated works. Interest in this area of copyright law is the result of several recent and widely discussed cases. In Harper & Row v. Nation Interprises,' an unnamed source provided the Nation magazine with galleys of the soon-to-be published memoirs of Gerald Ford. Paraphrasing and quoting from the memoirs, the Nation rushed into print what it believed to be a hot article on Ford's decision to pardon Richard Nixon. Harper & Row had earlier sold prepublication rights to Time magazine for $25,000, but, after the Nation's article appeared, Time canceled its contract to publish excerpts from the forthcoming memoirs. In ruling against the Nation, the Supreme Court held that the unpublished nature of the work was a key factor negating a defense of fair use. Two more recent cases involved the rights of biographers to quote