Copyright And Collective Authorship

Addresses the difficult question of how to determine the authorship, and ownership, of copyright in highly collaborative works.

Addresses the difficult question of how to determine the authorship, and ownership, of copyright in highly collaborative works.

As technology makes it easier for people to work together, large-scale collaboration is becoming increasingly prevalent. In this context, the question of how to determine authorship – and hence ownership - of copyright in collaborative works is an important question to which current copyright law fails to provide a coherent or consistent answer. In Copyright and Collective Authorship, Daniela Simone engages with the problem of how to determine the authorship of highly collaborative works. Employing insights from the ways in which collaborators understand and regulate issues of authorship, the book argues that a recalibration of copyright law is necessary, proposing an inclusive and contextual approach to joint authorship that is true to the legal concept of authorship but is also more aligned with creative reality.

This third edition of Collective Management of Copyright and Related Rights presents an in-depth revision with invaluable updates on the different systems, legislative options and best practices of CMOs worldwide. As with previous editions, the book is written to reach a wide audience, with a special focus on questions that might emerge for governments as they prepare, adopt and apply collective management norms and regulations. The edition also sheds light on new copyright and related rights developments, including digital, technological and business trends, from all over the world. Additionally, there is detailed discussion on topics such as aspects of competition, national treatment, and different models of collective management.

As information flows become increasingly ubiquitous in our post digital environment, the challenges to traditional concepts of intellectual property and the practices deriving from them are immense. The romantic understanding of the lone author as an endless source of new creations has to face these challenges. In order to do so, this work presents a collectivist model of intellectual property rights. The core argument is that since copyright works enjoy profit from significant public contribution, they should not be privately owned, but considered to be a joint enterprise, made real by both the public and author. It is argued that every copyright work depends on and is reflective of the author's exposure to externalities such as language, culture and the various social events and processes that occur in the public domain, therefore copyright works should not be regarded as exclusive private property. The study takes its organizing principle from John Locke, defining and proving the fatal flaw inherent in debates on copyright: on the one hand the copyright community is eager to arm authors with a robust property right over their creation, while on the other this community totally ignores the fact that the exposure of the individual to externalities is what makes him or her capable of creating material that is copyrightable. Just as Locke was against the absolute authority of kings, the expressed view of the study is against the exclusive right an author can claim.

What fresh perspectives can viewing copyright law through a humanities' looking glass bring to key notions of tomorrow's copyright law?

In the summer of 2012, the Supreme Court of Canada issued rulings on five copyright cases in a single day. The cases represent a seismic shift in Canadian copyright law, with the Court providing an unequivocal affirmation that copyright exceptions such as fair dealing should be treated as users’ rights, while emphasizing the need for a technology neutral approach to copyright law. The Court’s decisions, which were quickly dubbed the “copyright pentalogy,” included no fees for song previews on services such as iTunes, no additional payment for music included in downloaded video games, and that copying materials for instructional purposes may qualify as fair dealing. The Canadian copyright community soon looked beyond the cases and their litigants and began to debate the larger implications of the decisions. Several issues quickly emerged. This book represents an effort by some of Canada’s leading copyright scholars to begin the process of examining the long-term implications of the copyright pentalogy. The diversity of contributors ensures an equally diverse view on these five cases, contributions are grouped into five parts. Part 1 features three chapters on the standard of review in the courts. Part 2 examines the fair dealing implications of the copyright pentalogy, with five chapters on the evolution of fair dealing and its likely interpretation in the years ahead. Part 3 contains two chapters on technological neutrality, which the Court established as a foundational principle of copyright law. The scope of copyright is assessed in Part 4 with two chapters that canvas the exclusive rights under the copyright and the establishment of new “right” associated with user-generated content. Part 5 features two chapters on copyright collective management and its future in the aftermath of the Court’s decisions. This volume represents the first comprehensive scholarly analysis of the five rulings. Edited by Professor Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, the volume includes contributions from experts across Canada. This indispensable volume identifies the key aspects of the Court's decisions and considers the implications for the future of copyright law in Canada.