Copyright in Digital Age

Copyright and technology have a long and intertwined history during which both have felt their influence on each other. The exclusive rights of reproduction and distribution given to the creators of artistic and literary works today are very different from what they were 500 years ago when this relationship began. Copyright developed as a direct consequence of the invention of the printing press. Before its invention, the principle protecting author’s rights did not exist because the mass reproduction of literary works was not possible. Gutenberg’s invention of movable type, however, revolutionised the industry and the stationers in England moved from reproducing single volumes by hand, to producing many more copies to match the growing demand, which resulted in books gaining significant financial value. Value that was difficult to access by the authors of the books until 200 years later when the Statute of Anne, in an effort to encourage the sustained production of original works, granted the authors exclusive rights to their works and started the whole copyright story. Modern national copyright legislation has evolved with different influences throughout history. However, as the world continued to develop and cross-border activity flourished, national copyright legislation was not sufficient to govern what had become a global concern. International agreements were developed over time that reacted to technology’s influence on copyright while at the same time setting the baseline for national copyright legislation to grow around. The Berne Convention remains the most important international agreement on copyright and most national laws and international instruments have developed with reference to it. Following the age of the printing press, the next major technologies to influence copyright were the new recording and broadcast technologies that brought revolutions that forced major shifts in copyright legislation in its efforts to curb infringement. The current digital era poses the biggest challenge copyright legislation has had to face in its history with technology enabling copyright infringements of a scale that by far exceeds all other periods combined. A lot of laws and litigation have marked the path leading up to the situation today, with many remedies proving ineffective in reversing the scale of copyright infringement. It is time that the copyright industry stopped fighting new technology and realise that their survival might depend on finding new business models that incorporate technologies like Peer to Peer networks into their strategies.

2004

This paper explores two assumptions on intellectual property right. The first assumption claims that the development of copyright law is essentially determined by features of the technology used by the author to create copyright works. In other words, copyright law doctrines and laws are shaped and created in response to types of copyright works created through use of certain technologies, and to relations arising from the use of such works. This is easily shown by historical analysis from which it is evident that the development of creation is followed by the development of copyright. The latter one always legs behind with legal solutions to precisely that extent to which it is necessary for the social relations to be shaped and created by the use of copyright works that are made using certain technologies in the process of creation. The second assumption is a bit more complicated to prove, because it claims that, due to its characteristics, intellectual property right is insufficiently explored in its essence. Although this paper does not dwell on argumentation why the existing doctrinal dichotomy between copyright and related rights on the one hand, and industrial property rights on the other, cannot actually be sustained, because of the need to consider the intellectual property as a single branch of law, the paper still addresses certain ontological issues of the subject of intellectual property right protection in order to better illustrate the arguments for the first claim. If the view that intellectual property right is significantly determined by the basic characteristic of its subject of protection is accepted, numerous further questions arise on the present role of intellectual property right in modern societies. If we identify the basic characteristic of the subject of intellectual property right protection as non-material nature of the subject of protection itself, then we get a clearer view of intellectual property as a branch of law extending its protection to non-material objects, unlike the traditional property right protection. These non-material objects were simply not perceived as protectable before a certain level of development of civilization has been reached and certain copying technologies have been developed.

Contemporary Intellectual Property

This chapter considers the evolution of modern copyright law against the background of its historical development in the UK and the international and European legal frameworks within which UK copyright law has been increasingly set since the nineteenth century. It examines the rationale and justifications for copyright and identifies the general policy context within which law and policy has developed in the UK and the EU. It also highlights the rapid development of new technologies which has brought copyright reform to the forefront in recent times, the difficulties which this new environment presents for the copyright framework, and how the framework has developed to such challenges.