Authors and Creative Users : Addressing the Conceptual Challenges of Digital Creativity to EU Copyright Law from the Perspective of the Author

To be an “author” might mean many different things, depending on the context in which the word is used. This thesis explores the EU copyright’s concept of author and how it relates to the everyday digital creativity on the Internet. It invites to consider what EU copyright law might look like if the digital creators which this thesis calls Creative Users were included in the legal system as “authors”. For this purpose, the thesis analyses the concept of author in EU copyright law through its history and theory and several conceptualisations that can be seen to characterise what “author” is in the European copyright tradition are identified. These conceptualisations are then used to deepen the understanding of the current EU copyright law and to reflect on two examples of Creative User activities: the collective knowledge production of Wikipedia and the transformative cultural communication of Internet memes. This thesis proposes that to integrate potential new forms of authorship, a compromise could be found between the different ways of conceptualising the author. It is suggested that if the author that is presently guaranteed a high level of protection under EU copyright law were to be treated as a flexible and more inclusive concept and allowed to evolve together with cultural and technological change, it should influence how copyright protection and exploitation are approached as well

On Author, Copyright and Originality: does the unified EU originality standard correspond to the digital reality in Wikipedia?

This article is contributing to the future of copyright law debate by exploring the recently harmonised originality standard in the EU copyright law and its suitability to a creative sharing community of Wikipedia. It shows that the “free creative choices” and “author’s personal” touch criteria established by the CJEU might be unsuitable not only because of practical concerns, but also because the understanding of “author” they are based on does not match the understanding possessed by Wikipedia community. The concepts of author (or rather author and Wikipedian) are compared through three key elements: author’s relationship with work, author’s relationship with others and presumptions about author’s personality and creative process

Beyond the Creative Commons Framework of Production and Dissemination of Knowledge

The thesis discusses the licensing system of the Creative Commons from the perspective of the theory of the commons mostly as formulated by Elinor Ostrom. The work starts by describing the concepts and theory of common pool resources and regime of the commons for production and distribution of these resources. The main characteristics for successful traditional commons – efficiency, equity and sustainability are taken as the basis for an analysis of an example of a new form of commons – the commons for production and dissemination of information. The framework of the Creative Commons is analysed in detail as an example of such commons. The question of effectiveness is answered through an analysis of ideas on different ways of production of information and maximization of its value in our society. Equity is assessed using international human rights as a universal standard of equity in national and international communities. Sustainability of the Creative Commons is assessed by analysing robustness of the legal framework of this licensing system. In addition, special emphasis is given to the strength and structure of communities this framework gives basis to. CC communities of Jamendo and ccMixter are compared to other movements of the commons for information that are older and seemingly better established, in this case an open source community of GNOME. The work does not aim to answer if the Creative Commons is the best tool for commons of information, but merely tries to assess it from few selected perspectives. The conclusions of this thesis show that the framework of Creative Commons has some problems, but nevertheless is a good starting point to create commons for information (especially for cultural works). Some suggestions that could possibly make this framework even stronger and more sustainable are made in the very end of the work

Beyond the Creative Commons Framework for Production and Dissemination of Knowledge

This thesis is about the licensing system of the Creative Commons discussed from the perspective of the theory of the commons mostly as formulated by Elinor Ostrom. The work is started by describing the concepts and theory of common pool resources and regime of the commons for production and distribution of these resources. The main characteristics for successful traditional commons – efficiency, equity and sustainability are taken as the basis for an analysis of an example of a new form of commons – the commons for production and dissemination of information. The framework of the Creative Commons is analysed in detail as an example of such commons. It is chosen because of its popularity and scope of inclusion. The question of effectiveness is answered using ideas from the field of economics on different ways of production of information and the maximization of its value for society. The equity is assessed using international human rights as a universal standard of equity in national and international communities. Sustainability of the Creative Commons is assessed comparing it to other movements of the commons for information that are older and seemingly better established. Special emphasis is given to the strength and structure of communities these frameworks give basis to. The work does not claim to answer if the Creative Commons is the best tool for commons of information, but merely to assess it from selected perspectives. The conclusions of this thesis show that the framework of Creative Commons has its problems, but nevertheless is a good starting point to create commons for information (especially for cultural works). Some suggestions that could make this framework even stronger and more sustainable are made in the very end of the work