Copyright and The Internet

Pac-Balaj Ionut Popa Flavius Jurjiu Catalin Fodor Alexandru

Copyright
Copyright refers to laws that regulate the use of the work of a creator, such as an artist or author. This includes copying, distributing, altering and displaying creative, literary and other types of work. Unless otherwise stated in a contract, the author or creator of a work retains the copyright.For a copyright to apply to a work, it must be an original idea that is put to use. The idea alone cannot be protected by copyright. It is the physical use of that idea, such as an illustration or a written novel, that is covered under copyright law.(www.graphicdesign.about.com) In other words we can say that a person does not need to be a layer to be a musicin,but there is one thing that every author(it doesnt depend what he creates) needs to know and that thing is the term :copyright.Even if we deal with a painter,poet,actor,musician,singer,songwriter,dancer,for all of them this term copyright matters at each step they do in their entire career. To all artists, "copyright" is more than a term of intellectual property law that prohibits the unauthorized duplication, performance or distribution of a creative work. To them, "copyright" means the chance to hone their craft, experiment, create, and thrive. It is a vital right, and over the centuries artists have fought to preserve that right.(http://questioncopyright.org/promise)

History of copyright

One of the questions that appear is where did copyright come from?The answer is not as simple as it looks at first sight and there were some controversies regarding this question . The origin of copyright law makes us think about the 1710 and Queen Anne,the Monarch who has lived during the Unification of Englad and Scotland into the brand-new Great Britain.She became the first suveran of this new state and she ruled 12 years till her death in august 1714. The Statue of Anne was the thing that we call the first copyright law(Those infringing your copyright shall pay a fine of one penny for every sheet,split

between the author &the crown., And well nuke the book from orbit.Its the only way to be sure..This means that it gave authors control over all those that could copy their work and make them pay if they want to use their ideas .After some time a group of rebellious colonists thought Statue of Anne was a good idea so they decided to copy/paste it into their own constitution and this way they succeded to give the congress the power to:promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts by securing for limited times to authors the exclusive right to their respective writings..It is right to say that copyright is a contract between the authors and the society The Statue of Anne is considered by many historians the moment when after years and years of controversies the authors were given the right that they have always deserved.Nowadays it is also considered a very important moment in the modern history. According the official website of the United Kingdoms Patent Office,the very first authors who concerned about the fact that their books could be copied and they werent credited properly for what they do were the authors from Classical Greece and Rome .Due to the high rate of the illiteracy there were no printing press consequently the development of the copyright laws was very slow. Another important fact in the history of the copyright is the Berne Convention. All the acts,protocols and revisions were signed at Berne,Switzerland,on September 9,1886 and the reason of this act was to protect literature and artistic works. Even if we can not consider a theft copying a book because for example if youre bike is stolen(you have no bike) but if somebody copies your book(you both have a book) we are concious that this is not fair and here is the moment when the law of copyright occurs. In recent times the law of copyright has continued to suffer changes and these were influenced by technological advance.Protection has been extended to a lot of other works besides literature such as photography, cinematography, soundrecording, broadcasting, cable transmissions and computer programs.For example,in 1831,musical compositions were included into copyright protection and in 1870,paintings,statues and other works of fine art were place under copyright protection.Indeed internet is a new kind of problem for copyright law but this doesnt mean that copyright can not addapt to internet as it addapted to everything during the time. My personal opinion is that the law of copyright is one of the most important laws but I dont think that those who are in charge to addapt this law to the new kind of problems that internet comes up with will ever be able to solve thiese issues entirely.They will find a way to make the things right but internet will always make troubles.

II. Copyright in our days

In the information age, allmost all that we create can be protected by some form of property law. One form of protection is the copyright. Copyrighted works on the Internet can be: software, news stories, graphics, pictures. Since its creation,the internet has been characterized as the largest threat to copyright. The Internet is awash in information, a lot of it having diverse variaties of copyright protection. The frightening reality is the fact that anyone who is browsing through the internet can face problems because of the fact that everything on the internet is copyrighted. On the World Wide Web what is protected is the unique design of a Web page and its contents, including: links, original text, graphics audio, video, html, vrml, and all other unique elements that make up the original nature of the material. When creating a Web page, you can link to other Web sites. However, some individuals and organizations have specific requirements when you link to their Web material.It is recommeneded to check a site carefully to find such restrictions and to ask permission. You need to cite the source when quoting or paraphrasing material from other websites and sources. How much you quote is limited. Use free graphics on you Web page. If the graphics are free they should not be copied without permission. Also when creating a Web page, you cannot put the contents of another persons or organizations web site on your Web page, copy and paste information together from various Internet sources to create your own web page. You can quote or paraphrase limited amounts, if you specify from which source. For print sources the principal remains the same. You can can copy and paste list of resource,logos, icons, and other graphics from the other graphics from other web sites to your web page, only if they are advertised as freeware. Share is not free. Some organizations are happy to let you use their logos,if it is free advertising.They might not approve of all sites who want to use their logo,even if it is free advertising,that is why is recommened to let them know who uses theire logo. The exclusive rights of the owner of copyright in a sound recording are limited .If for instance someone wants to duplicate the sound recording in which the actuale sound is rearranged ,remixed , or the quality is altered,they can do so even though such sound imitates or simulates that in the copyrighted sound recording. Another exclusive rights of the owner of copyright is regarded to computer programs. It is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided by that fact that

this is new copy or adaptation of that computer program provided by the fact that this new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program.Any exact copies prepared in accordance with the provisions may be sold or transfered along with the copy from which such copies were made. Adaptations may be transferred only with the authorization of the copyright owner. It is not an infringement for the owner of a computer program to authorize the copy of a computer program only for maintenance or repair of the program. Those who benefit from the copyright, are those that work on creating software, web pages, music, films and all other things that can appear on the internet and can be downloaded, either for using it or for commercial reasons. Also, the owner of a copyright product can make a huge profit because of the fact that he can make copies of his product, and so, though copyright protects the owners creation, it lets him to make copies of his product. The infringement helps copyright prevent the copying of all or a substantial part of a work. Whether a portion of a work is "substantial" or not,its debatable because that portion can include a consideration of both the quality and quantity of the portion. There can be copyright infringement where only a small portion of the work is copied but the portion is of great qualitative importance in the original. There are two main types of copyright infringement. The first is direct infringement, where the defendant has copied the whole or a substantial part of the work. The second is contributory infringement, where the defendant has authorized another to make infringing copies of the work. What amounts to "authorizing" another to make infringing copies will depend on the facts of each case. However, merely making a method of copying available to another person may not amount to contributory infringement. For example, in Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a claim that a manufacturer of video cassette recorders was liable for contributory infringement because people might use them to make unauthorized copies of copyright movies shown on television. The court reasoned that there were other, legitimate uses for video cassette recorders, such as using the VCR to temporarily "time-shift" programs. Because the machines were capable of substantial non-infringing uses their sale did not amount to contributory infrinement.(As seen on wikipedia.com , idea being modified and reapplied). In conclusion,if you want to update a program,make a site,use a logo for a personal creation your need to ask permision from the owner in order to not be part of a infringement law suit.Its also recommend to offer credit to owner creation.

III. Why copyright is not enough. From the definition we now know that the copyright is a form of protection provided to the authors of original works of authorship, including: literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works both published and unpublished.[1] This definition seems to cover pretty much everything, but in fact, it does not. Contrary to what many people believe, there is no actual copyright protection for ideas, concepts, themes, inventions, discoveries, shot phases, quotes, titles or logos. Also, copyright protects theform of expression rather than the subject matter of the writing. For example, a description of a new invention could be copyrighted, but this would only prevent others from copying the description itself; it would not prevent others from writing a description of their own, based on your ideas, nor would it prevent them from constructing and using the machine, using the details given by your description. Due to these limitations, copyright law cannot protect any of the following: the name of the invention, its design or the logo/slogan/name of the company that produces it and/or of the product itself. Because of these limitations, three additional protection features are needed.

1) The Trademark

A trademark is a form of legislative protection for a word, name, symbol, or device that is used in commerce in order to tether a certain category of goods to an unique source and to distinguish them from goods on the market that come from other sources. Future clients then rely on these trademarks to identify certain products and services and then, finally, to make their purchasing decision. As long as a business has a certain trademark tethered to a product, another business cannot use a confusingly similar mark for a similar or related product. It does not prevent others to sell the same product using a clearly distinct and unique mark.

2) The Patent

A patent is a form of intellectual property protection which consists of a set of exclusive rights, granted by the state of residence to an inventor, for a limited period of time. In

exchange, the inventor must make the details of his invention available to the public with enough specificity to enable a subsequent innovator to recreate it. [2] Basically a patent gives the inventor the exclusive right to prevent all others from constructing, importing, selling or offering to sell his invention, without permission, for up to 20 years. This secures the inventors position as the sole provider of his invention to the market.

3) The industrial design rights

The industrial design right is form of intellectual property that protects the visual aspect (or design) of objects if the novelty is not purely utilitarian. It is defined as "the shape, patterns or colors, or any combination thereof, of an article that creates an aesthetic impression through the eye." [3] The innovation level and individual character of the design are judged only on those parts of the design which are visible during use.

With these three additional protection methods, the owner of the invention has all the tools he needs to protect his intellectual property from any loophole or limitation found in the copyright legislation. Thus the inventor can: Register a patent, to prevent anyone from stealing his invention; Tether a trademark to his product to make it uniquely identifiable on the market; Use a Copyright Act to protect his descriptions, documentation, plans, etc; Protect the inventions design with the legislation offered by the industrial design rights. Some companies use a fifth, more controversial, method to protect their inventions and also to gain an economic advantage over their competitors: the so called trade secrets. This method is based around keeping your knowledge a secret to the outside world. Instead of applying for a patent, which basically means full disclosure, the innovation, and all its derivates processes (manufacturing, implementing, etc) are kept a secret. Although tempting, using trade secrets is not advised, due to the poor legislative protection it offers. The same principles/methods enumerated earlier, apply to intellectual property protection on the internet.

Lets take for example Yahoo! Inc.( also known as simply Yahoo). In the logo, the symbol tells us that Yahoo! is a registered trademark of the company Yahoo! Inc. On their portal, the text Copyright 2012 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. tells us that they hold the exclusive rights to use their content, thus you cannot use the information on their page, without their consent. Also, all their internet technologies and software innovations are patented; such an example is the collection called Yahoo!s Advertising Patents. These patents provide a method for companies to generate revenue from their portals, by means of online advertising. As a parenthesis, this collection of patents is part of the group of patents for which Yahoo! Inc. filed legal court action against Facebook Inc., the reason being patent rights infringement. As we now see, every one of these legislative acts were created for a different reason, but their end goal is the same: to protect the intellectual property of the author/entity of a original creation, regardless if that creation is in tangible form, a idea, a symbol, name/slogan for a company, in the real world or in the virtual world. Yet, neither of them fully protects an original creation, that is why, they all work together to achieve their goal. IV.Significant movements in todays copyrights scene In todays copyright scene, movements all over the world fight against copyright infringement to obtain once and for all,safety and protection of intellectual property.In order to get this most desired protection,laws all across the globe were emitted to provide the tools to fight intelectual theft.Even though there are a lot of laws that offers control over ones virtual goods,new laws or movements are being created to offer better tools to fight this problem.Two most known anti-piracy movements but only in United States of America ground were PIPA and SOPA.Even though this laws could not offer better ways to fight this crisis and not affect other serious issues such as freedom of speech or privacy policies,the general ideas were reinstated in another treaty called ACTA which ,in the present time ,is not only in the USA but is at a multinational scale. The first significant movement is Protect IP Act also knows as PIPA (which stand for Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act), which is mainly described in general terms,as the name already suggest,a way to control access to content which is considered copyright infrigement.In other words this law would give full control over the trafic of the internet to prevent any intellectual theft,this means that authors (mainly companies or inttelectual property owners) will be able to censorship sites,cut

off acces to illegal downloadble content that certain sites provide,even block any form of contact with content that may be considered malicious.The main problem with this ideas are that it would have a major impact over freedom of speech,even though this could stop illegal material being spread it could shut down certain social sites like YouTube,Facebook,Twitter that could have any material which is considered intelectual theft,such as any form of personal opinion representation.Another problem with this, would be the so called censorship of certain illegal sites.Only the name will be blocked not their IP adress,so in other words sites could be still accesed by their IP(that being how the internet works).In conclusion,PIPA or Protect IP Act would do more harm than good ,even if it could stop infrigement,it would sacrifice the most important part of internet,and that being freedom of speech.The bill was supposed to be voted by the American Senate (according to the wikipedia.com entry about PIPA) on Januray 20, 2012 ,but it has been postponed,for now. Another movement which is similar (mostly a rewrite of PIPA) is Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA.Its main aim,like Protect IP Act , is to prevent access to illegal content which is considered intellectual property theft, but it goes further than previous law.The main difference between both laws would be that ,SOPA, extends the notion of control over internet traffic.Would not only give the possibilites offered by Protect IP Act but would make providers of internet to monitorize content that every users accesses.As in previous law , authors (mainly companies or inttelectual property owners) will be able to censorship sites,cut off acces to illegal downloadble content that certain sites provide , SOPA will go deeper in this matter by making internet providers,sites used for search engine(for example Google,Yahoo) and any other method of online tranzactions (such as PayPal) not provide anymore service to sites which contain infringement or downloadble unauthorized content.In other words providers ( internet providers,search engines,online tranzaction methods) will be the main problem solvers for the copyright fight agaisnt piracy.The main problems can be shown in a simple example,in one word:YouTube.The company represeted by the well known site where millions of videos are being uploaded every day by users which contain everything from personal opinions to creative representations of any subject or any idea without any form of payment,as the law states , would have to surveillance every single video and withdraw acces to the site for any user that owns a video which contains any possible malicious content,even though there are laws which offers posibility to authors to block videos from YouTube which contains copyright infringement without blocking access for that user to the site.In other view SOPA would affect the general notion of equality between all people,notion of free speech and would even offer such power that could be abused in time.

As for Protect IP Act,the vote for Stop Online Piracy Act was postponed due to protests of 18 Januray,2012,in which all the major sites such as Wikipedia,Mozilla,Reddit offered an preview of censhorship that the law would state.An example of this censorship still being showed today by sopablackout.org site. Even though U.S. movements have been canceled or delayed, their ideas are continued by the most significant movement of our days, called Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, ACTA ,being at multinational scale.The Trade Agreement main goal is to establish an international legal way of targeting counterfeit goods, generic medicines and copyright infringement on the Internet (as wikipedia.com entry presents).In other words ,like previous laws ACTA goes further than Internet copyright infringement and affect a whole diffrent area such as targetting fake goods/medicines,in orther to stop problem at a larger scale.ACTA seems at the beginning to use the same fighting ways as SOPA/PIPA,making internet providers withdraw their services from sites being seen as copyright infringement.But as it goes further ,the law will give companies the posibility to stop the production of simulated goods/medicines.Even though this would seem good at first,would not only stop the production but will control everything from distribution,and it seems the law will give abusive powers to the companies that could control the flux of economy.Even though SOPA/PIPA had some parts that would affect freedom of speech , ACTA seems that would not only affect it but control it completly , the most extreme part being extracted from the law is the oportunity for authorithies to control your technological devices going through personal files in order to search for copyright infrigement content,and apply extreme measure such as confiscating the device, law suits for anyone that would own such content.It could rewrite the notion of free speech ,having dezastrous impact. In January 2012 Member States of the European Union including Romania have signed the law. On 27 January, across Poland , protestors numbered in tens thousands have gathered on street to fight against the sign of the act.Across the globe there are held protests against ACTA from petition signing to gathering material against this Agreement. European Parliament didnt not pass the chance to vote like the U.S Goverment in the cases of SOPA,PIPA,the future of the law being cast to vote in July,2012. In conclusion, movements that seem to fight against copyright infringement seem only as big desperate demands of power from vast corporates,goverment and domains which could not only destroy general rights but even go as far as sacrificing anything to have the chance to see their goals acomplished,it even would affect the Internet making it unstable and much unriliable.

Biography:

www.amazon.com www.questionsoncopyright.org www.swu.edu www.youtube.com www.benedict.com

[1]

United States Patent and Trademark Office http://www.uspto.gov/patents/resources/general_info_concerning_patents.jsp

[2]

- Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful - Beth Simone Noveck

[3]

- Article 2, Design Act

www.scribd.com/doc/85102677/complaint www.wikipedia.org www.lawmart.com www.uspto.gov http://sopablackout.org/ www.wikipedia.com http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBwE111ZzfU (protests in Poland)