A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself. A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States.
Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. The modern concept of intellectual property developed in England in the 17th and 18th centuries. The term "intellectual property" began to be used in the 19th century, though it was not until the late 20th century that intellectual property became commonplace in most of the world's legal systems.
The copyright law of the European Union is the copyright law applicable within the European Union. Copyright law is largely harmonized in the Union, although country to country differences exist. The body of law was implemented in the EU through a number of directives, which the member states need to enact into their national law. The main copyright directives are the Copyright Term Directive, the Information Society Directive and the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. Copyright in the Union is furthermore dependent on international conventions to which the European Union or their member states are part of, such as TRIPS Agreement or the Berne Convention.
The history of copyright starts with early privileges and monopolies granted to printers of books. The British Statute of Anne 1710, full title "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned", was the first copyright statute. Initially copyright law only applied to the copying of books. Over time other uses such as translations and derivative works were made subject to copyright and copyright now covers a wide range of works, including maps, performances, paintings, photographs, sound recordings, motion pictures and computer programs.
The creative industries refers to a range of economic activities which are concerned with the generation or exploitation of knowledge and information. They may variously also be referred to as the cultural industries or the creative economy, and most recently they have been denominated as the Orange Economy in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Copyright in the Netherlands is governed by the Dutch Copyright Law, copyright is the exclusive right of the author of a work of literature or artistic work to publish and copy such work.
The Access to Knowledge (A2K) movement is a loose collection of civil society groups, governments, and individuals converging on the idea that access to knowledge should be linked to fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic development.
The Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases is a directive of the European Union in the field of copyright law, made under the internal market provisions of the Treaty of Rome. It harmonises the treatment of databases under copyright law and the sui generis right for the creators of databases which do not qualify for copyright.
The Adelphi Charter on Creativity, Innovation and Intellectual Property is the result of a project commissioned by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce, London, England, and is intended as a positive statement of what good intellectual property policy is. The Charter was issued in 2004.
James Packard Love is the director of Knowledge Ecology International, formerly known as the Consumer Project on Technology, a non-governmental organization with offices in Washington, D.C., and Geneva, that works mainly on matters concerning knowledge management and governance, including intellectual property policy and practice and innovation policy, particularly as they relate to health care and access to knowledge.
The European Union Computer Programs Directive controls the legal protection of computer programs under the copyright law of the European Union. It was issued under the internal market provisions of the Treaty of Rome. The most recent version is Directive 2009/24/EC.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to intellectual property:
The Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) is an international non-profit advocacy organization based in Washington, DC, United States which represents the information and communications technology industries. According to their site, CCIA "promotes open markets, open systems, open networks, and full, fair, and open competition." Established in 1972, CCIA was active in antitrust cases involving IBM, AT&T and Microsoft, and lobbied for net neutrality, copyright and patent reform and against internet censorship and policies, mergers or other situations that would reduce competition. CCIA released a study it commissioned by an MIT professor, which analyzed the cost of patent trolls to the economy., a study on the economic benefits of Fair Use and has testified before the Senate on limiting government surveillance and on internet censorship as a trade issue.
The Copyright and Information Society Directive 2001 is a directive in European Union law that was enacted to implement the WIPO Copyright Treaty and to harmonise aspects of copyright law across Europe, such as copyright exceptions. The directive was first enacted in 2001 under the internal market provisions of the Treaty of Rome.
Limitations and exceptions to copyright are provisions, in local copyright law or the Berne Convention, which allow for copyrighted works to be used without a license from the copyright owner.
Copyright infringement is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the protected work, or to make derivative works. The copyright holder is typically the work's creator, or a publisher or other business to whom copyright has been assigned. Copyright holders routinely invoke legal and technological measures to prevent and penalize copyright infringement.
Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy is Lawrence Lessig's fifth book. The book was made available for free download and remixing under the CC BY-NC Creative Commons license via Bloomsbury Academic. It is still available via the Internet Archive. It details a hypothesis about the societal effect of the Internet, and how this will affect production and consumption of popular culture to a "remix culture".
Notice and take down is a process operated by online hosts in response to court orders or allegations that content is illegal. Content is removed by the host following notice. Notice and take down is widely operated in relation to copyright infringement, as well as for libel and other illegal content. In United States and European Union law, notice and takedown is mandated as part of limited liability, or safe harbour, provisions for online hosts. As a condition for limited liability online hosts must expeditiously remove or disable access to content they host when they are notified of the alleged illegality.
The Free Culture Forum (FCForum) was an international meeting of relevant organisations and individuals involved in free culture, digital rights and access to knowledge. It took place in Barcelona every annually from 2009 to 2015, jointly with the oXcars, a free culture festival. The oXcars are a non-competitive awards ceremony held at Sala Apolo in Barcelona, Spain, in October each year. They are a public showcase that puts the spotlight on cultural creation and distribution carried out under the paradigms of shared culture. Through presentations and symbolic mentions of works in a series of categories, real legal situations involving free culture are shown using parody.
The Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, formally the Directive (EU) 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC, is a European Union (EU) directive which has been adopted and came into force on 7 June 2019. It is intended to ensure "a well-functioning marketplace for copyright". It extends existing European Union copyright law and is a component of the EU's Digital Single Market project. The Council of the European Union describes their key goals with the Directive as protecting press publications; reducing the "value gap" between the profits made by Internet platforms and by content creators; encouraging collaboration between these two groups, and creating copyright exceptions for text- and data-mining.
