Copyright Laws in Canada and the USA - Term Paper Example

Copyright infringements INTRODUCTION The violation of the copy rights are one of the most frequent infringements in the new technological era. The rapid development of the technology, of the Internet and the possibility to share any kind of information over the net makes copyright infringements easy and accessible. Often, people are not even aware of the fact that they are violating somebody’s rights and law provisions. In spite of the existing set of legislative acts that tend to protect the copyright holders’ rights, the infringements in this domain continue to happen. In this paper, the author’s main objective is to identify these infringements and to analyze the legislative acts that regulate this domain, both in Canada and the USA. This comparison will establish the strong and the weak points of the legislative framework. In this context, some cases will be described and analyzed, in order to understand the law’s influence on the reality. 1. COPYRIGHT LAWS IN CANADA AND THE USA One of the most important acts that protects the copyright holders in Canada is the Copyright Act. In terms of this Act, “a work or other subject-matter is not deemed to be published or performed in public or communicated to the public by telecommunication if that act is done without the consent of the owner of the copyright.”1 This Act applies to literary or textual works: books, pamphlets, poems, computer programs, dramatic works: films, videos, plays, screenplays and scripts, musical works: compositions consisting of both words and music, or music only (lyrics without music are considered literary works), artistic works: paintings, drawings, maps, photographs, and sculptures, architectural works, (section 2) performer’s performances (section 15); broadcast communication signals (section 21); and sound recordings such as records, cassettes and CDs (section 18). The positive character of this act is that any work which has been created or written becomes automatically protected from the first moment of its existence. Moreover, the Copyright Act also protects the moral rights of the author. In spite of this, the Copyright Act does have some weak points, such as for example the stipulation included in Section 29, allowing usage of protected works without proper authorization in purpose of “research or private study… by an educational institution, library, archive or museum, or person acting under its authority”. Internationally speaking, Canada is a party of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works of 1886. Canada has also signed but not yet ratified both the WIPO Copyright Treaty of 1996 and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty of 1996. In USA, the most outstanding legislative act that protects copyright is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, meant to stop people from breaching their contracts by interfering with the market for contract-breaching tools.2 It has implemented the treaty obligations of the United States and modernized the copyright law, adjusting it to the new digital era. It is addressed to the protection of the copyright holders and the online service providers. The changes that were made by the provisions of the new act in the U.S. copyright law were major; therefore, as expected, it has gained both supporters and opponents. Among the changes that were made through the DMCA, it could be mentioned, as an example, that the circumvention of the anti-piracy measures contained by the majority of the commercial software was made illegal and punished with severe penalties. Another novelty brought by DMCA was the establishment of safe harbours for online service providers, another subject for intense debates. DMCA is believed to be one of the most severe copyright legislative acts in the world. Under its provisions, any act of circumvention is regarded as an infringement unless it falls under an exception established by the Act. The infringement that may be seen as an innocent action without any absolute intent towards infringement still constitutes copyright infringement under the DMCA provisions. Along with DMCA, the copyright in USA is also protected by several other national legislative acts like: Title 17 of the USA Code, Copyright Act of 1790, Copyright Act of 1831, Copyright Act of 1909, Copyright Act of 1976, Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) of 1994 - restored U.S. copyright for certain foreign works, Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 - extended terms to 95/120 years or life plus 70 years and the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005. International acts that affect the American copyright law are: the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works - established copyrights of U.S. works in Berne Convention countries; the Universal Copyright Convention - this treaty was developed by UNESCO as an alternative to the Berne Convention and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. Both in Canada, as in the USA the powers to regulate the Copyright law are in the jurisdiction of the government, by virtue of the Constitution. However, there are some differences between the legal regulations in Canada and the USA: first of all, the Canadian law is much more forgiving with the infringers than the USA law, which includes stiff fines and prison sentences for severe and sometimes for even non-infringing actions. Moreover, the USA has included Canada in the watch list of the countries that need reform. However, according to CCIA, "Canadas current copyright law and practice clearly satisfy the statutory adequate and effective standard. Indeed, in a number respects, Canadas laws are more protective of creators than those of the United States."3. It has been noticed that unlike the Canadian Copyright Act, the USA copyright laws do not protect the moral rights of the authors, and they limit the fair actions by outlawing most of them. 2. CASES As copyright infringements are at the moment among the most popular legal violations, the legal cases that exist in this domain are varied and abundant. One of them is the case of Canadian Admiral Corp. v. Rediffusion Inc. In this case, a producer in a van was broadcasting a football game by directing three different cameras situated on the stadium. Canadian Admiral, the company that had bought the live broadcast rights, sued Rediffusion for capturing that transmission and selling it for private and public broadcasting. However, the Court held that there was no infringement in the defendant‘s actions, as there is no copyright in a sports event. Another interesting case is that of Snow v. The Eaton Centre Ltd. This case is a leading one in the protection of moral rights. M. Snow was asked to create a sculpture in Torontos Eaton Centre formed of 60 geese. During a Christmas display, the mall placed on the neck of each goose a ribbon. The plaintiff – M. Snow – argued it by claiming that the “composition was infringed by the “ridiculous” addition of the ribbons, and sought an injunction for the removal of the ribbons.” 4 The Court took into consideration the fact that Snow was a well known artist in the international community and found that his concern for his reputation was reasonable. The Court agreed with the plaintiff’s claim and granted the injunction and paid moral rights. Another leading Canadian case regarding the software copyright possibility is the case of Apple Computer, Inc. v. Mackintosh Computers Ltd. In this case the Court held that programs having ROM silicon chips fall under the protection of the Copyright Act and therefore, they constitute a unique form of expression. Consequently, “the program embodied in the silicon chip is properly subject to protection by copyright and the unauthorized copying of that program constitutes a violation of copyright.”5 An important case regarding privacy, copyright protection and file sharing is the case of BMG Canada Inc. v. John Doe. In this case the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) and other important record labels were refused by the Federal Court of Canada and the Federal Court of Appeal to obtain the subscriber information of Internet service provider (ISP) customers alleged to have been infringing copyright. The plaintiffs requested to divulge the information of 29 IP addresses that were believed to have downloaded over 1000 copyrighted music files through peer-to-peer applications. This was not allowed by the court, under the provisions of PIPEDA and the lack of evidence that the downloading was illegal. CONCLUSIONS Considering the nowadays rough reality, authors and creators are entitled to a proper legal protection of their rights. Intense debates on the extent of the copy right have been carried on among copyright holders, consumers and distributors for ages. There are opinions that throw doubt on the necessity of the existence of copyright in the society. Therefore, copyright has become an important political and legal issue in most countries, especially in Canada. Various bills have been proposed in order to improve the legislative acts in this domain, however, until now, none of them has been found to actually contain some improvements. We do not have to rely only on legal measures in protecting authors and creators. It is necessary that each of us should understand the importance of the copyright and starts respecting it voluntarily. REFERENCES: 1. Copyright Act, Section 2.2 (3) 2. Adam D. Thierer, Clyde Wayne Crews (2002). Copy fights: the future of intellectual property in the information age. Massachusetts: Cato Institute 3. Michael Geist (February, 23, 2010). Tech giants defend Canadian copyright law. The Vancouver Sun. Retrieved March 22, 2010 from http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Tech+giants+defend+Canadian+copyright/2602278/story.html 4. Gil Zvulony. Copyright Law in Canada: Author Rights and Moral Rights. Zvulony&Co lawyers. Retrieved on March 22, 2010 from http://www.zvulony.com/moral_rights.html. 5. Apple Computer, Inc. v. Mackintosh Computers Ltd Read More