Copyright Laws Around The World

NOTICE: This article was not written by a lawyer, barrister or attorney, and is not to be taken as legal advice.

Overview

The media industries as we know them have faced an upheaval with the Internet age, and the fallout from it makes a new news headline every day. Newspapers complain because Internet news is making them outdated, movie theaters dread the coming day when everybody has a portable DVD player, and of course, the music industry is tied in knots over music file sharing. And so they try to beat it down with copyright law.

The funny thing is, music file sharing is done over the Internet. And the Internet is international, and, well, kind of lawless. There is no overriding international Internet police. And copyright law varies somewhat from one country to the next. That those laws which do exist aren't always enforced from one country to another is an even more important factor.

Most industrialized nations adopt international trading treaties, either the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC) or the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. Berne was adopted in 1886 to apply to book publishing, and the UCC in 1952 by the Geneva convention. Neither of them make stimulating reading, so in a nutshell, the UCC is more lenient than the Berne.

Countries with no known copyright law: Afghanistan, Anguilla, Aruba, the Cayman Islands, Eritrea, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, San Marino, São Tomé, Turkmenistan, and Vanuatu.

Other countries which have a copyright law policy extend intellectual property rights from the lifetime of the creator to 25 to 100 years after the creator's death.

Those that don't fit into the above two categories adopt either Berne or UCC, or the World Trade Organization's Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights template.

Alongside copyright law are the concepts of "fair use" and "derivative works", which allow for exceptions, which again vary from place to place. For instance, almost anyone agrees that a library run by the government can archive a copyrighted work for historical purposes. Usually reusing a sample of a copyrighted work for the purposes of promotion, advertising, or reviewing is allowed. But after that, things get pretty swampy. Can you take a picture of a building on a public street? Germany says yes, Italy says no.

Bottom line: once you cross a border between countries, nobody but nobody is going to be 100% certain whether or not a copyright law has been broken. Remember, just because you have a law doesn't mean you can't hire an expensive team of attorneys to argue down the case in court. And just because there isn't a law, doesn't mean you can't buy a couple of judges and make one up! Witness the recent Pirate Bay case for example.

Now that we've wandered all over the world and confused ourselves, let's focus on the industrialized domains of the US, the EU, and the AU, applying it specifically to music file downloading and use:

The United States

The US has probably the largest reputation for draconian intellectual property policies. To clear up one common misconception: neither the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) nor the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) are government entities. They are private organizations formed from private companies. They have no more legal authority than anyone else; they conduct all of their business through private litigation, exactly like you'd sue a neighbor in small claims court.

Copyright Laws in the United States fall under three chief branches of legislation:

• The Copyright Acts 1790-1998. These basically protected right of the original author and whomever the author chose to distribute the work through, to sell and derive profit directly from that work, with an extension beyond the author's death. The extension was recently raised to 120 years postmortem, in the Sonny Bono act of 1998.
• International Copyright Act of 1891. This is the United State's effort to protect foreign-produced works under US copyright law, in cooperation with international copyright law.
• The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) 1998. This is the controversial law which makes it a Federal crime to circumvent any measures in place which control access to copyrighted works. Highly contested and protested.

The DMCA may yet be repealed. There are many arguments that it is unconstitutional, and there are Congressmen arguing for its repeal or alteration. The DMCA is also heavily abused and is often evoked in fraudulent cases - for instance, Google, Inc. has received numerous take-down notices for content accessible by its search engine; over half of them were from competing businesses and over a third of them were not valid copyright claims at all!

There are also numerous exemptions to the DMCA, two of which affect music files:

• Colleges and universities can still archive work. By extension, anyone doing research or historical preservation for the public good would be protected by this exemption.
• When you legally own an audio work which is protected by a faulty device which compromises the safety of your electronic equipment (think of it as "the Sony/BMG exemption).

Finally, it is highly unusual for intellectual property laws to be directly enforced by the government. It can be argued that copyright law, and prosecuting the violation of it, should remain a civil matter.

The European Union and United Kingdom

Let's not get confused here: While the United States can pass a law and each state there has to live with it, the European Union can only pass directives and it's up to individual countries within the European Union to follow them or not, although not to do so threatens their standing with the Union and the benefits it provides. Individual countries can also interpret their own level of enforcement.

Also keep in mind that not all countries have equal interest in the union. France was in it in 1957; Romania and Bulgaria only joined in 2007. Other countries are candidates to join in the future. And finally, witness the effectiveness of joining several countries under a coalition; typically, the more countries join, the more thinly-spread the authority of the coalition becomes.

So, European Union directives affecting digital copyright:

• The Copyright Directive of 2001. This is a very broad, standard copyright law definition. So far only Spain has taken it to heart; Finland, France, the Czech Republic, and the United Kingdom also have partial implementations.
• The Copyright Duration Directive of 1993. This sets the date of copyright duration, currently to 70 years postmortem.

And in the United Kingdom:

• The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. A more intricate and complete set of copyright laws, affecting only those subjects under the crown's rule. There are numerous exemptions for educational use, public administration, and libraries and archives, along with a twin to the US's "fair use" policy called "fair dealing". It also provides for some quirky applications of "moral rights" - such as the right of an artist to object to derogatory treatment of work.
• The Electronic Commerce Regulations of 2002. This implements the EU's Copyright Directive, specifying it for digital media. It's more a matter of specifying the contract between consumer and producer, with rights and responsibilities afforded to each.

Copyright law in the UK and EU is still largely a civil matter; there must be a complaint against an infringement, and an injured party must still appear in court to claim damages, else no actions are taken.

Australia

Australian copyright law is modeled much after the UK copyright policy, but, as one may expect, slightly more relaxed and simplified. It also follows the form of the Berne Convention.

Protected works include music, as well as everything from sculptures to books. Copyright does not expire until 70 years postmortem. there is a "fair use" style provision also called "fair dealing", allowing for exemptions for review, research, news-reporting, libraries, and - an unusual addition! - parody and satire. You might call it "the Weird Al Yankovich exemption".

In 2000, "moral rights" were also added to be recognized under Australian copyright law, which includes the rights to be clearly represented as the author of a work, to avoid false attribution, and to not have the work treated in a derogatory manner.

An unusual extra provision is Crown Copyright, whereby the Australian Commonwealth and State governments may themselves own copyright to works. These may continue for 50 years after the work was made and released.