Author-Centered Copyright Enforcement?

This Symposium explores our flexibility within international copyright law to better serve the purposes of copyright and, specifically, to benefit the individual human creators (authors) of our cultural and intellectual heritage. Where other contributions consider the potential for a different allocation of rights, here I explore the potential for author-centered copyright enforcement: could we frame copyright enforcement practices and remedies with the explicit goal of promoting the interests of authors? Could enforcement reform avoid the zero-sum game that pits homogenous and undifferentiated “copyright interests” (authors and publishers) against the rest of the world (commercial infringers, users, intermediaries, and others)? The international legal framework governing copyright enforcement is relatively open-textured. It is worth at least considering whether we could tailor civil enforcement procedures and remedies so that authors can win without ever more draconian enforcement. Apart from certain very specific contexts—such as moral rights—authors are rarely recognised as having interests in enforcement distinct from those of other right holders. But although authors and cultural intermediaries (publishers, record companies, and other disseminators of content) “do market battle shackled one to another as they do battle with users” with the “prime aim” of “driv[ing] away pirates and freeloaders and [extracting] returns from licensees,” their interests when infringement is alleged are not co-extensive. The division of risks and rewards in litigation can reflect well-known imbalances in bargaining power between authors and disseminators. Contracts may allocate significant litigation risk to authors, while allocating litigation decision-making and rewards to the entity that owns copyright. Authors have distinct moral claims, and personal interests not likely to be felt with the same intensity by publishers or record companies. Further, needs and desires of authors can conflict with those of investors. I have argued elsewhere for better recognition of the personhood and interests of defendants in thinking about copyright procedures and remedies and, in other earlier work, focused on how we might get better value from the public investment in copyright enforcement. So my purpose here is not to advocate for a model, but rather, to demonstrate that there are author-friendly alternatives to the constant upwards ratchet of copyright enforcement reform

The use of survey evidence in Australian trade mark and passing off cases

Abstract not available

Plenary Session 2 - The Impact of “Impact” in IP Scholarship: Citations, Downloads and Why We (Should/Don’t) Care

By American University Washington College of Law, Texas A&M University School of Law, and University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law

Plenary Session 2 - The Impact of “Impact” in IP Scholarship: Citations, Downloads and Why We (Should/Don’t) Care

By American University Washington College of Law, Texas A&M University School of Law, and University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law

Digital Rights in Asia: Rethinking Regional and International Agenda

In this chapter we explore the appropriate conception and agenda for digital rights and associated governance in Asia. We do so from the perspective of an Australian location in the Asian region, and informed by interdisciplinary research on digital rights. Our starting point is a dissatisfaction with the framing, assumptions, and norms of digital rights globally. At the risk of simplification, we will argue that the dominant ways of framing digital rights and governance continue to be modelled on a limited repertoire of Western experiences and concepts of digital technology, rights, and freedom. digital rights are often left off the agenda in the discussion of digital transformations, especially the highly visible, mainstream, official, and authorized discussions. Such theoretical, empirical, comparative, and cross-sectoral work is urgently needed, not least because questions of digital rights and governance are moving beyond earlier, if still pressing issues of freedom of expression to a wider range of privacy, data justice, labour rights, communication rights, governance, and democratization issues, posed by the new platforms (such as sharing and caring economy). Not only are such new Asian and inter-Asia theorisations and practices of rights and governance important in this region (especially for countries such as Australia), but they stand to help us rethink and confront the impasses and political and conceptual problems with dominant global digital rights thinking. In turn, this project of reimagining and mainstreaming digital rights conceptions, practices, and norms makes a powerful contribution to advancing key issues and challenges arising in contemporary Asia. The expansion of digital transactions across Asia requires more comprehensive and considered rights frameworks to guarantee social justice, citizenship and political participation, as well the economic benefits of the many initiatives underway. Otherwise the danger is that digital transformations can hinder rather than advance social progress.University of Sydney Sydney Research Excellence Initiativ

Digital Rights in Australia

Australians are some of the world’s greatest users of social media and mobile broadband, and our nation is in the top ten globally for internet use. At a time when our use of these technologies is increasingly redefining aspects of our personal and professional lives, Digital Rights in Australia explores urgent questions about the nature of our rights now and into the future. The analysis covers rights issues in four areas: privacy, profiling and analytics; government data-matching and surveillance; workplace change; and freedom of expression and speech regulation. It explores the ethical and legal challenges we face in using digital, networked technologies and the debates we are having about how to best manage their transformative impacts. Crucially this study examines the major role of private, transnational digital platforms in reshaping the way we work, study and conduct business, our interactions with government and with each other. The program of research which generated the Digital Rights in Australia report has three aims: • to assess the evolving citizen uses of digital platforms, and associated digital rights and responsibilities in Australia and Asia, identifying key dynamics and issues of voice, participation, marginalisation and exclusion; • to develop a framework for establishing the rights and legitimate expectations which platform stakeholders––particularly everyday users––should enjoy and the responsibilities they may bear; • to identify the best models for governance arrangements for digital platforms and for using these environments as social resources in political, social and cultural change. This report draws on three sources of data: a national survey of the attitudes and opinions of 1600 Australians on key rights issues; focus group discussion of related rights scenarios; and analysis of legal, policy and governance issues, illustrated by case studies. The core findings are grouped in chapter order.University of Sydney Sydney Research Excellence Initiative (SREI)