Crime and Punishment:Piracy and the Law

Adapted from Internet Piracy Exposed

Chapter 2

by Guy Hart-Davis

What is Legal and What is Not?

• The super summary

• You can create digital files from content in some media for your personal use

• If you hold the rights to content, or have been legally granted the right to distribute that content, you can distribute digital files containing it

What is Legal and Not (2/3)

• Unless you hold the rights to content, or you have been legally granted the right to distribute that content, you cannot legally distribute digital files containing it

• If you have legal copies of digital files of content whose copyright is held by other people, you can burn CDs or DVDs containing them for backup or for your own personal use

What is Legal and Not(3/3)• Unless you hold the copyright or the

copyright holder has explicitly granted you permission to distribute it, you cannot sell digital files of any copyrighted material

• If you have bought a legal copy of copyrighted material in a digital file, you can sell it to someone else in much the same way as you would a physical object– After the sale, you must not retain a copy of the

file, so that you have transferred the digital file to the other person and not kept a copy yourself

Some Examples of What and What not is Legal

• Internet Stuff pg. 29

• Audio Pg. 30

• Vido pg 31

• Graphics pg 32

• Text pg 33

• Software pg 34

Section on Terminology and Law• This section of the talk will introduce

• Intellectual Property

• Copyright– Duration of Copyright– The Copyright Notice– Registering the Copyright– The Five Exclusive Rights

• Fair Use

• Personal Use

• First Sale Doctrine

Intellectual Property• Deals mostly with nonphysical objects• A poem, a song, or a novel doesn’t have a fixed

physical format and can easily be copied and distributed

• IP says that such art has a value and that the creator has the sole right to make and distribute copies for it, so that the crator can gain from creating the work in the first place

• IP law covers several different areas, including copyright law, patent law, trademark law, and trade secret law

Copyright• As defined in the Copyright Act of 1976,

copyright extends legal protections to the copyright holder of fixed forms of original expresssion in many forms including literary, dramatic, and musical works; sound recordings; audiovisual works (such as movies); performance expression (such as pantomimes and choreography); architectural works (such as buildings); and graphic, pictorial, and sculptural works.

• These types of works are referred to as “works of authorship”

Copyright (2)

• Read list of items that are not copyrightable, pg. 35– Ideas – though the expression of an idea is

– Facts

– Works that consist entirely of common information and that do not contain any original authorship

– Links and URLs, because they are like facts

– Names and titles – though you can trademark distinctive names and titles if you get to them before anybody else does

– Systems and procedures – though the expression of a system or procedure may be

Three key points for a copyrighted item, pg. 36

• The work needs to be original

• The work needs to be fixed in a tangible format

• You don’t even have to include a copyright notice on your work though it’s a good idea to do so. The copyright symbol is just a formality identifying the copyright holder, it’s certainly a good idea to include a copyright notice.

Duration of Copyright

• The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act was signed into law on Oct 27, 1998

• the old copyright rules: before 1978, copyright used to last for a first term of 28 years from date work was published or work was registered in an unpublished form

• Copyright holder could renwew copyright during 28th year of 1st term, thus providing a 2nd term of 28 ytrs

• If copyright holder failed to renew copyright during that year, it expired, and work entered public domain

Duration (2)• New Sonny bono laws• If work created before 1978 and was still under

copyright in Oct 1998, the copyright term is 95 yrs from the date that copyright was initially registered

Sonny Bono Rules• If work was created after 1/11978, copyright term

lasts for life of author (or last surviving author) plus 70 yrs– If work was anonymous, copyright term is the shorter

of 120 yrs from creation yr or 95 yrs from year of 1st publication

• If work created prior to 1978 but not published or registered by then, copyright term lasts for life of author plus 70 years and at least till the end of 2002

• If work is published before end of 2002, the copyright term lasts at least until the end of 2047

The Copyright Notice• Copyright © 2002 John Doe. All rights reserved

• This example is partially redundant.

– You can use either the word “Copyright” or the © copyright symbol

• The copyright stmt must include the year of publication.You may include the full date on the work in case your copyright is challenged by someone else claiming to have created the work before you.

• In Bolivia and Honduras, you need to include the resergation-of-rights phrase (All rights reserved) in the copyright notice.

• If you don’t care about those two countries, you can skip the phrase.

The Five Exclusive Rights

• There are five exclusive rights to a copyrighted work

• Reproduction Right: You may duplicate, copy, imitate, or transcribe the work

• Distribution Right: You may distribute copies of the work to the public (selling, renting, leasing, or lending them)– May use a 3rd party to distribute them

• Modification Right (Derivative Works Right : You may create new works derived from (basedon ) the copyrighted work

• Public Performance Right: You may perform the work in public or transmit the work to the public

• Public Display Right: You may transmit the work to the public

Fair Use

• You need to know about fair use mostly if you sample or pardoy works, if you criticize works, or if your’re involved in education

• Fair Use is a provision in the Copyright Act that allows you to use a portion of a copyrighted work “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies of rclassroom use), scholarship, or research” w/o infringing copyright

• Four factors taken into account when determining what does or does not constitute fair use: p 41– < next page>

Fair Use: Four Factors Taken into Account when Determining what Does or Does not Constitute Fair

Use

• The purpose and character of the use: commercial, educational, reporting, scientific, and so on.

• The type of the copyrighted work. Some works are deemed more worthy of copyright protection than others. Original creative works (songs, movies, novels) are more tightly protected than factual works (newspaper articles, histories)

• The amount of the copyrighted work used in relation to the whole work

• The amount of copyrighted work used shouldn’t be more than is necessary for the purpose of copying

• The effect that the use will have on the value of the copyrighted work or its potential market.