166,989 research outputs found

    The fair dealing doctrine in respect of digital books

    Get PDF
    Copyright is essentially the right of the rightsholder of an original work to prohibit others from making or distributing unauthorised copies of his or her work. More specifically for this dissertation, when an end user deals with digital content, one of the aims of copyright becomes the balancing of the conflicting interests in ‘exclusivity’ on the one hand, and in ‘access to information’ on the other. Exclusivity is achieved by the rightsholders through technological protection measures to protect their commercial interests. Access to information is achieved where works are available to the general public without payment and technological protection measures and where the digital content is not directly marketed for commercial gain. Exclusivity and access to information are two conflicting cultures surrounding copyright in the digital era. It is submitted that unless we find a socio-economic-legal way for the dynamic coexistence of these two conflicting cultures by means of fair dealing, the culture of exclusivity will eventually dominate fair access to information. The transient nature of digital content means that rightsholders have little or no control over their works once the end user has obtained a legal digital copy of the work. The right ‘to prohibit’ end users from copying and distributing unauthorised copies is, therefore, largely meaningless unless a legal or other solution can be found to discourage end users from the unauthorised reproduction and distribution of unauthorised copies of the work. Currently, technological protection measures are used to manage such digital rights because legal permissions within the doctrine of fair dealing for works in printed (analogue) format are inadequate. It is, however, submitted that a legal solution to discourage end users from copying and distributing unauthorised copies rests on two pillars. Firstly, the solution must be embedded in state-of-the-art digital rights management systems and secondly the business model used by publishers, and academic publishers in particular, should change fundamentally from a business-to-consumer model to a business-to-business model. Empirical evidence shows that the printing of e-content will continue to be relevant far into the future. Therefore, the management of fair dealing to allow for the printing of digital content will become increasingly important at educational institutions that use e-books as prescribed course material. It is submitted that although the origination cost of print editions and e-books correspond, the relatively high retail price of e-books appears to be based on the fact that academic publishers of digital content do not have the legal or digital rights management tools to manage the challenges arising from the fair dealing doctrine. The observation that academic publishers are reluctant to grant collecting societies mandates to manage the distribution of digital content, and/or the right to manage the authorised reproduction (printing) of the digital content, supports this hypothesis. Ultimately, with technologies at our disposal, the fair use of content in digital and print format can be achieved because it should simply be cheaper to comply with copyright laws than to make unauthorised digital or printed copies of content that our society desperately needs to make South Africa a winning nation.Mercantile LawLL. M

    Copyright Consultation Submission

    Get PDF
    In this submission, the author articulates the principles that she feels should guide copyright reform. Appropriate reforms would aim to restore legitimacy to the Copyright Act by ensuring technological neutrality, and by implementing the WIPO treaties in a manner that best suits Canada‘s specific circumstances, policy traditions, and cultural goals. Clear legal drafting so that ordinary Canadians can understand the Act is also essential. Strong users’ rights foster expression, enhance learning opportunities, and make creation possible in the first place. With respect to specific reforms, Digital Rights Management must not prohibit anti-circumvention for non-infringing purposes, licensing regimes must be accountable and transparent, and copyright protection generally should be subject to a flexible and broad fair dealing test by the inclusion of a ―such as‖ clause in the current fair dealing provision of the Copyright Act, as guided by the Supreme Court‘s test in CCH v. Law Society of Upper Canada

    Digital Locks, Real Freedoms: Technological Protection Measures in Bill C-32

    Get PDF
    Dr. Thomas Margoni analyzes modifications in Bill C-32 that would most directly affect digital media. Particular attention is given to the implementation of the so-called Technological Protection Measures (TPMs) and Rights Management Information (RMI), and how they will affect fair dealing provisions. He further analyzes whether, beyond the international requirements, Canada (as many other countries) really needs protection for digital locks, which in many cases turns out to be a private system of justice. Contract-based alternatives that favour Access to Knowledge (A2K) and wider dissemination of culture (such as Creative Commons and Free/Libre Open Source Software licences) are explored

    Copyright Consultations Submission

    Get PDF
    The Writers Guild of Canada (―WGC‖) supports a copyright regime which balances the needs and interests of consumers with the rights and protections of authors. Works should be widely available for use by consumers provided that authors are fairly remunerated for those uses. Rather than criminalize consumers’ actions, the WGC would prefer to see a Copyright Act that pre-authorizes common consumer uses of works in exchange for a revenue stream payable to authors and copyright owners by using the current Private Copying Levy as a model for a more expanded collective licensing scheme. Further, Canada should embrace a National Digital Strategy and implement reforms such that Electronic Rights Management should not be permitted to be removed, fair dealing should not be expanded by the inclusion of a ‗such as‘ clause, parody and satire should cease to be infringing activities, shared authorship should be bestowed jointly on the credited writer and credited director of cinematographic work, and the WIPO Treaties should be implemented and subsequently adapted to Canadian circumstances, in no small part to avoid the hostile reception accorded to Bill C-61

    Third-party copyright and public information infrastructure/registries: How much copyright tax must the public pay?

    Get PDF
    In a case currently before the High Court of Australia (Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) v NSW ) the fundamental question at issue is whether the owner (in this case surveyors) of copyright material (in this case land survey plans) that is submitted as part of a public register (in this case the land titles registry) with all the benefits that entails, should nonetheless have the right to charge the government and end users every time they reproduce or communicate that material to the public. This book chapter examines the merits of this claim

    The evolution of anti-circumvention law

    Get PDF
    Countries around the world have since 1996 updated copyright laws to prohibit the circumvention of "Technological Protection Measures", technologies that restrict the use of copyright works with the aim of reducing infringement and enforcing contractual restrictions. This article traces the legislative and treaty history that lies behind these new legal provisions, and examines their interaction with a wide range of other areas of law: from international exhaustion of rights, through competition law, anti-discrimination measures, regulation of computer security research, constitutional rights to freedom of expression and privacy, and consumer protection measures. The article finds that anti-circumvention law as promoted by US trade policy has interfered with public policy objectives in all of these areas. It picks out key themes from the free trade agreements, legislation and jurisprudence of the World Trade Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization, USA, EU member states, and South American, Asian and Australasian nations. There is now a significant movement in treaty negotiations and in legislatures to reduce the scope of anti-circumvention provisions to ensure their compatibility with other important policy objectives

    "Beyond copyright": law, conflicts and the quest for practical solutions

    Get PDF
    No description supplie

    Access and Preservation in Archival Mass Digitization Projects

    Get PDF
    [Excerpt] In 2014, the Dalhousie University Archives began its first archival mass digitization project with the Elisabeth Mann Borgese fonds. The successful completion of this project required the project team to address both broad and specific technical and intellectual challenges, from rights management in an online access environment to the durability of the equipment used. To best understand the challenges faced, there will first be a brief introduction to the fonds and project goals of balancing preservation and access before moving on to a discussion of these challenges in further detail, and finally, concluding with a discussion of some considerations, best practices, and lessons learned from this project

    BlogForever D3.3: Development of the Digital Rights Management Policy

    Get PDF
    This report presents a set of recommended practices and approaches that a future BlogForever repository can use to develop a digital rights management policy. The report outlines core legal aspects of digital rights that might need consideration in developing policies, and what the challenges are, in particular, in relation to web archives and blog archives. These issues are discussed in the context of the digital information life cycle and steps that might be taken within the workflow of the BlogForever platform to facilitate the gathering and management of digital rights information. Further, the reports on interviews with experts in the field highlight current perspectives on rights management and provide empirical support for the recommendations that have been put forward
    • 

    corecore