Newsletter
| Digital era and copyright: an impossible love? |
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| 16-06-2005 | |
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The digital age has completely changed our way of living, working and even thinking. John P. Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Fondation (EFF- http://www.eff.org) once said: "If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it? How are we going to get paid for the work we do with our minds?" [1]
Modifications of certain aspects of the international law regarding copyright may resolve such questions as property tracking. Since works are reproduced on different material supports, this leads to different legal consequences. Digital material support can prevent subsequent duplication for several applications (anti-copying mecanisms for example), but not the fact to upload author's work on a server, for the purpose of its communication to the public. In the latter case, law enforcement is impossible. Another consequence shall be the protection criteria of such work. Existence of a support may be a condition of protection in a copyright system; this is not the case in French law where the article L111-2 of the Intellectual Property Code (IPC) states "A work shall be deemed to have been created, irrespective of any public disclosure, by the mere fact of realization of the author's concept, even if incomplete" (as well as in the Berne Convention art. 5.2 that stipulates "The enjoyment and the exercise of these rights shall not be subject to any formality". The absence of a material support for "on-line" creation may then arise and impair the protection. It is inevitable that the reproduction on a server will conduct to worldwide distribution via integrated networks and authors' work will be reproduced, modified, translated, used, etc without control. In such an environment, copyright imploses : authors are deprived of their own control by the simple fact to distribute online. It is then difficult to conciliate such antinomic notions and to interest the public in the legitimate rights of authors. Most people still continue to think that available information on the Internet is free of rights; The creation of a new right - the copyleft - is the ultimate expression of this process. Related linksElectronic Frontier Foundation Journal Of Law and Technology (JOLT) Richmond Legal news and articles by experts on Juriscom.Net [1] John Perry Barlow "The Economy of Ideas: a framework for rethinking patents and copyrights in the Digital Age (Everything you know about intellectual property is wrong)," Wired, Vol.3.03, March 1994. DocumentsThe Economic Impact of Counterfeiting Geographical Indications - Where now after Cancún? Felix Addor, Switzerland (OAMI publication) Loi Commerce Electronique French law relating to digital communications (in french 4Mo) Directive 2000/31/CE on electronic commerce
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