Monopoly defeating mechanisms: Will they function in the digital world?

Abstract

History reveals that ‘copyright’ was originally monopolistic (in the early fifteenth century) and remained so until the enactment of the Statute of Anne in 1709. Since then copyright has striven to maintain a delicate balance between incentive to authors and avoiding monopolistic stagnation. To achieve these goals, certain monopoly-defeating mechanisms have been adopted such as: fair use, public domain, the idea/expression dichotomy and the exhaustion doctrine. Recently, however, with the implementation of new laws: for instance the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (1988), the EU Copyright Directive (2001), and the implementation of the EU Copyright and Related Rights Regulation amending the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988, there is a growing concern that the mechanisms which were enacted to defeat the monopoly will not work in the digital medium. With the provision of affixing technological measures to copyrighted works and the non-application of the exhaustion doctrine in the digital world, arguably the monopoly defeating mechanisms have been disabled. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the way monopoly defeating mechanisms are becoming non-functional in the digital world. Furthermore, the study also demonstrates how the European Copyright Directive and the UK implementation of the Directive has transgressed the boundary of exclusive rights set by the two World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties – the World Copyright Treaty (WCT) and the WIPO Performers and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) – and copyright law, thereby strengthening the copyright owner's rights in a way that was never intended by the WIPO treaties or by copyright law. Consequently, the new laws have also shifted copyright's attention from commercial pirates to non-commercial individual users. The study aims to demonstrate how the shift took place and finally, trace the recurrence of the monopoly; giving rise to a situation where there is no fair use/dealing, no public domain, no idea/expression distinction and no exhaustion doctrine.

Keywords:

• monopoly defeating mechanisms
• non functional
• digital world

Notes

Cyprian Blagden, The Stationers' Company: A History, 1403–1959 (London: Allen, 1960).

Lyman Ray Patterson, Copyright in Historical Perspective (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968), 42.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Kahle v Ashcroft, C-04-1127\Dismiss.ord.wpd.

M.T. Michele Rennie, ‘E.U. Copyright Directive: May 1999. Amendments to Appease Some Industry Sectors’, Computer and Telecommunications Law Review 5, no. 5 (1999): 123–6.

Martin Kretschmer, ‘Digital Copyright: The End of an Era’, European Intellectual Property Review 25, no. 8 (2003): 334.

Lucie Guibault and Natali Helberger, ‘Copyright Law and Consumer Protection’, ECLG/035/05, February 2005.

Kamiel J. Koelman, ‘A Hard Nut to Crack: The Protection of Technological Measures’, European Intellectual Property Review 22, no. 6 (2000): 274.

Guibault and Helberger, ‘Copyright Law’.

Section 70, CDPA.

Guibault and Helberger, ‘Copyright Law’.

L.A. Bygrave and K.J. Koelman, ‘Privacy, Data Protection and Copyright: Their Interaction in the Context of Electronic Copyright Management Systems’, Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam, 1998, 43–6.

Severine Dusollier, ‘Electrifying the Fence: The Legal Protection of Technological Measures for Protecting Copyright’, European Intellectual Property Review 21, no. 6 (1999): 291.

Koelman, ‘A Hard Nut to Crack’, 273.

Clifford G. Miller, ‘The Proposal for an EC Council Directive on the Legal Protection of Computer Programs’, European Intellectual Property Review 12, no. 10 (1990): 347–50.

Allen N. Dixon, ‘The Berne Convention Enters the Digital Age', European Intellectual Property Review 18, no. 11 (1996): 605.

Ibid.

Rennie, ‘E.U. Copyright Directive’.

Simon Stokes, ‘The UK Implementation of the Information Society Copyright Directive: Current Issues and Some Guidance for Business, Legislative Comment’, Computer and Telecommunications Law Review 10, no. 1 (2004): 3.

Article 2 of WPPT; see also Russel Frame, ‘The Protection and Exploitation of Intellectual Rights on the Internet: The Way Forward for the Music Industry’, Intellectual Property Quarterly 4 (1999): 443, 470.

Article 8 of WPPT; Frame, ‘The Protection’.

Jorg Reinbothe and Silke von Lewinski, ‘The WIPO Treaties 1996: Ready to Come into Force’, European Intellectual Property Review 24, no. 2 (2002): 199, 202.

Michael Hart, ‘The Copyright in the Information Society Directive: An Overview’, European Intellectual Property Review 24, no. 2 (2002): 58.

Article 3.1 Information Society Directive.

Ibid.

Hart, ‘The Copyright’, 58.

Koelman, ‘A Hard Nut to Crack’, 274.

Dusollier, ‘Electrifying the Fence’, 285.

Simon Stokes, Digital Copyright Law and Practice, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Hart, 2005), 52.

Dusollier, ‘Electrifying the Fence’, 285.

Article 11 of the World Copyright Treaty.

Article 18 of the WIPO Performers and Phonograms Treaty.

Ibid.

Dusollier, ‘Electrifying the Fence’, 291.

Ibid.

2001/29 EU Information Society Directive.

Article 6(3) of the Information Society Directive.

Section 296F (1) CDPA, 1988.

James G.H. Griffin, ‘The Changing Nature of Authorship: Why Copyright Law must Focus on the Increased Role of Technology’, Intellectual Property Quarterly 2 (2005): 137.

http://news.Com.com/2102-10273-5575417.html (accessed February 2005).

http://www.smh.com.au/news (accessed 15 February 2005).

Thomas Heide, ‘Access Control and Innovation under the Emerging EU Electronic Commerce Framework’, Berkeley Technology Law Journal 15 (Fall 2000): 993.

Terese Foged, ‘US and EU Anti Circumvention Legislation: Preserving the Public Privileges in the Digital Age’, European Intellectual Property Review 24, no. 11 (2002): 525.

Ibid., 7.

Ibid.

CDPA 1988, sections 296ZB (1), 296ZB (2).

Thomas C. Vinge, ‘Copyright Imperilled’, European Intellectual Property Review 21, no. 4 (1999): 197.

CDPA 1988, section 296F.

The New York Times, Arts –Television, ‘Steal this Show’, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/03arts/television (accessed February 2005).

http://new.com.com/2102-1025_3-5580735.html?tag = st.util.print

Software Directive, Article 7(1) (C).

EU Information Society Directive, 2001/29.

Software Directive, Article 5(2); CDPA 1988, s 50A.

Software Directive, Article 9(1), CDPA 1988, s 50A (3).

CDPA 1988, ss 50 B (4), 296A.