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155-399: Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy ) 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 produce derivative works . The copyright holder is usually
310-585: A New York Times article telling the story of Irina Margareta Nistor , a narrator for state TV under Nicolae Ceauşescu 's regime. A visitor from the west gave her bootlegged copies of American movies , which she dubbed for secret viewings through Romania. According to the article, she dubbed more than 3,000 movies and became the country's second-most famous voice after Ceauşescu , even though no one knew her name until many years later. Most countries extend copyright protections to authors of works. In countries with copyright legislation, enforcement of copyright
465-404: A dedicated server . There are ongoing discussion about the economic impact of P2P file sharing. Norbert Michel, a policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation , said that studies had produced "disparate estimates of file sharing's impact on album sales". In the book The Wealth of Networks , Yochai Benkler states that peer-to-peer file sharing is economically efficient and that the users pay
620-646: A moderation system , aggregators of various kinds, such as news aggregators , universities , libraries and archives , web search engines , chat rooms , web blogs , mailing lists , and any website which provides access to third party content through, for example, hyperlinks , a crucial element of the World Wide Web . Early court cases focused on the liability of Internet service providers (ISPs) for hosting, transmitting or publishing user-supplied content that could be actioned under civil or criminal law, such as libel or pornography . As different content
775-842: A 39-page ruling released November 8, 2013, US District Court Judge Christina Reiss denied the motion to suppress evidence gathered by authorities without a search warrant through an automated peer-to-peer search tool. Media industries have made efforts to curtail the spread of copyrighted materials through P2P systems. Initially, the corporations were able to successfully sue the distribution platforms such as Napster and have them shut down. Additionally, they litigated users who prominently shared copyrighted materials en masse. However, as more decentralized systems such as FastTrack were developed, this proved to be unenforceable. There are also millions of users worldwide who use P2P systems illegally, which made it impractical to seek widespread legal action. One major effort involves distributing polluted files into
930-530: A P2P community. The specific P2P system must be perceived as "useful" by the user and must be able to fulfil his or her needs and pursue his or her interests. Consequently, the "size of the community of users defines the level of usefulness" and "the value of the system determines the number of users". This two way process is defined by Vassileva as a feedback loop, and has allowed for the birth of file-sharing systems like Napster and KaZaA. However, in her research Vassileva has also found that "incentives are needed for
1085-526: A P2P network to locate the desired content. The nodes (peers) of such networks are end-user computers and distribution servers (not required). The early days of file-sharing were done predominantly by client-server transfers from web pages, FTP and IRC before Napster popularised a Windows application that allowed users to both upload and download with a freemium style service. Record companies and artists called for its shutdown and FBI raids followed. Napster had been incredibly popular at its peak, spawning
1240-484: A central server, however, Napster was held liable for copyright infringement and shut down in July 2001. It later reopened as a pay service. After Napster was shut down, peer-to-peer services were invented such as Gnutella and Kazaa . These services also allowed users to download files other than music, such as movies and games. Napster and eDonkey2000 both used a central server-based model. These systems relied on
1395-441: A commercial scale". Copyright holders have demanded that states provide criminal sanctions for all types of copyright infringement. The first criminal provision in U.S. copyright law was added in 1897, which established a misdemeanor penalty for "unlawful performances and representations of copyrighted dramatic and musical compositions" if the violation had been "willful and for profit". Criminal copyright infringement requires that
1550-486: A commercial scale." Piracy traditionally refers to acts of copyright infringement intentionally committed for financial gain, though more recently, copyright holders have described online copyright infringement, particularly in relation to peer-to-peer file sharing networks, as "piracy". Richard Stallman and the GNU Project have criticized the use of the word "piracy" in these situations, saying that publishers use
1705-520: A direct approach to the infringing party in order to settle the dispute out of court. "... by 1978, the scope was expanded to apply to any 'expression' that has been 'fixed' in any medium, this protection granted automatically whether the maker wants it or not, no registration required." With older technology like paintings, books, phonographs, and film, it is generally not feasible for consumers to make copies on their own, so producers can simply require payment when transferring physical possession of
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#17327919663141860-780: A fixed period, after which the copyright expired. It was "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or the Purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned." The act also alluded to individual rights of the artist. It began, "Whereas Printers, Booksellers, and other Persons, have of late frequently taken the Liberty of Printing ... Books, and other Writings, without
2015-474: A grass-roots movement following from the mixtape scene of the 80's and left a significant gap in music availability with its followers. After much discussion on forums and in chat-rooms, it was decided that Napster had been vulnerable due to its reliance on centralised servers and their physical location and thus competing groups raced to build a decentralised peer-to-peer system. Peer-to-peer file sharing technology has evolved through several design stages from
2170-559: A legally purchased CD (for example) to certain kinds of devices and media, provided rights holders are compensated and no copy protection measures are circumvented. Rights-holder compensation takes various forms, depending on the country, but is generally either a levy on "recording" devices and media, or a tax on the content itself. In some countries, such as Canada, the applicability of such laws to copying onto general-purpose storage devices like computer hard drives, portable media players, and phones, for which no levies are collected, has been
2325-490: A nation that has domestic copyright laws or adheres to a bilateral treaty or established international convention such as the Berne Convention or WIPO Copyright Treaty . Improper use of materials outside of legislation is deemed "unauthorized edition", not copyright infringement. Statistics regarding the effects of copyright infringement are difficult to determine. Studies have attempted to determine whether there
2480-551: A negative impact on record sales. It has proven difficult to untangle the cause and effect relationships among a number of different trends, including an increase in legal online purchases of music; illegal file-sharing; drop in the prices of compact disks ; and the closure of many independent music stores with a concomitant shift to sales by big-box retailers. The Motion Picture Association (MPAA) reported that American studios lost $ 2,373 billion in 2005 (equivalent to $ 3,702 billion in 2023) representing approximately one third of
2635-485: A peer has about him or herself. Peers may decide not to disclose information about themselves to maintain their privacy and online security. It is for this reason that the authors specify that "a subset of...attributes is explicitly claimed public by a peer", and they define such attributes as "claimed attributes". The third category of interests is group attributes, defined as "location or affiliation oriented" and are needed to form a...basis for communities", an example being
2790-417: A product of an individual, with attendant rights. The most significant point is that patent and copyright laws support the expansion of the range of creative human activities that can be commodified. This parallels the ways in which capitalism led to the commodification of many aspects of social life that earlier had no monetary or economic value per se. Copyright has developed into a concept that has
2945-503: A prominent role in many peer to peer networks and applications, such as BitTorrent, Gnutella and DC++ . There are different elements that contribute to the formation, development and the stability of these communities, which include interests, user attributes, cost reduction, user motivation and the dimension of the community. Peer communities are formed on the basis of common interests. For Khambatti, Ryu and Dasgupta common interests can be labelled as attributes "which are used to determine
3100-582: A public talk between Bill Gates , Warren Buffett , and Brent Schlender at the University of Washington in 1998, Bill Gates commented on piracy as a means to an end , whereby people who use Microsoft software illegally will eventually pay for it, out of familiarity, as a country's economy develops and legitimate products become more affordable to businesses and consumers: Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for
3255-432: A separate term of art to define one who misappropriates a copyright: '[...] an infringer of the copyright.' The court said that in the case of copyright infringement, the province guaranteed to the copyright holder by copyright law – certain exclusive rights – is invaded, but no control, physical or otherwise, is taken over the copyright, nor is the copyright holder wholly deprived of using the copyrighted work or exercising
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#17327919663143410-405: A service provided by another users. In the third, the user provides a list of relationships to help other users find specific files or services. In the fourth, the user participates actively in the "protocol of the network", contributing to keeping the network together. In the last situation, the user does not contribute to the network, downloads what he or she needs but goes immediately offline once
3565-675: A sharer implies that the sharer is sacrificing bandwidth". As sharing represents the basis of P2P communities, such as Napster, and without it "the network collapses", users share despite its costs in order to attempt to lower their own costs, particularly those associated with searching, and with the congestion of internet servers. User motivation and the size of the P2P community contribute to its sustainability and activity. In her work Motivating Participation in Peer to Peer Communities, Vassileva studies these two aspects through an experiment carried out in
3720-411: A significant effect on nearly every modern industry, including not just literary work, but also forms of creative work such as sound recordings , films , photographs , software , and architecture . Often seen as the first real copyright law, the 1709 British Statute of Anne gave authors and the publishers to whom they did chose to license their works, the right to publish the author's creations for
3875-412: A single word is insufficient to comprise a copyright work. However, single words or a short string of words can sometimes be registered as a trademark instead. Copyright law recognizes the right of an author based on whether the work actually is an original creation , rather than based on whether it is unique ; two authors may own copyright on two substantially identical works, if it is determined that
4030-461: A sufficiently large number of publishers of the client programs. Sharman Networks, the publisher of Kazaa, has been inactive since 2006. StreamCast Networks, the publisher of Morpheus, shut down on April 22, 2008. Limewire LLC was shut down in late 2010 or early 2011. This cleared the way for the dominance of the Bittorrent protocol, which differs from its predecessors in two major ways. The first
4185-509: A survey undertaken by Tiscali in the UK found that 75 percent of the English public polled were aware of what was legal and illegal in relation to file sharing, but there was a divide as to where they felt the legal burden should be placed: 49 percent of people believed P2P companies should be held responsible for illegal file sharing on their networks and 18 percent viewed individual file sharers as
4340-518: A tangible medium of expression" to obtain copyright protection. US law requires that the fixation be stable and permanent enough to be "perceived, reproduced or communicated for a period of more than transitory duration". Similarly, Canadian courts consider fixation to require that the work be "expressed to some extent at least in some material form, capable of identification and having a more or less permanent endurance". Note this provision of US law: c) Effect of Berne Convention.—No right or interest in
4495-407: A third party which did not have a role in producing the work. When this outsourced litigator appears to have no intention of taking any copyright infringement cases to trial, but rather only takes them just far enough through the legal system to identify and exact settlements from suspected infringers, critics commonly refer to the party as a " copyright troll ". Such practices have had mixed results in
4650-612: A whole. A right to profit from the work has been the philosophical underpinning for much legislation extending the duration of copyright, to the life of the creator and beyond, to their heirs. Yet scholars like Lawrence Lessig have argued that copyright terms have been extended beyond the scope imagined by the Framers. Lessig refers to the Copyright Clause as the "Progress Clause" to emphasize the social dimension of intellectual property rights. The original length of copyright in
4805-610: A wide range of creative, intellectual, or artistic forms, or "works". Specifics vary by jurisdiction , but these can include poems , theses , fictional characters , plays and other literary works , motion pictures , choreography , musical compositions, sound recordings , paintings , drawings , sculptures , photographs , computer software , radio and television broadcasts , and industrial designs . Graphic designs and industrial designs may have separate or overlapping laws applied to them in some jurisdictions. Copyright does not cover ideas and information themselves, only
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4960-543: A work eligible for protection under this title may be claimed by virtue of, or in reliance upon, the provisions of the Berne Convention, or the adherence of the United States thereto. Any rights in a work eligible for protection under this title that derive from this title, other Federal or State statutes, or the common law, shall not be expanded or reduced by virtue of, or in reliance upon, the provisions of
5115-566: A work must meet minimal standards of originality in order to qualify for copyright, and the copyright expires after a set period of time (some jurisdictions may allow this to be extended). Different countries impose different tests, although generally the requirements are low; in the United Kingdom there has to be some "skill, labour, and judgment" that has gone into it. In Australia and the United Kingdom it has been held that
5270-464: Is "robbery or illegal violence at sea", but the term has been in use for centuries as a synonym for acts of copyright infringement. Theft , meanwhile, emphasizes the potential commercial harm of infringement to copyright holders. However, copyright is a type of intellectual property , an area of law distinct from that which covers robbery or theft, offenses related only to tangible property . Not all copyright infringement results in commercial loss, and
5425-476: Is a monetary loss for industries affected by copyright infringement by predicting what portion of pirated works would have been formally purchased if they had not been freely available. Other reports indicate that copyright infringement does not have an adverse effect on the entertainment industry, and can have a positive effect. In particular, a 2014 university study concluded that free music content, accessed on YouTube , does not necessarily hurt sales, instead has
5580-588: Is a subject of debate and court cases in a number of countries. Internet intermediaries were formerly understood to be internet service providers (ISPs). However, questions of liability have also emerged in relation to other Internet infrastructure intermediaries, including Internet backbone providers, cable companies and mobile communications providers. In addition, intermediaries are now also generally understood to include Internet portals , software and games providers, those providing virtual information such as interactive forums and comment facilities with or without
5735-404: Is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal 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
5890-453: Is also efficient in terms of cost. The system administration overhead is smaller because the user is the provider and usually the provider is the administrator as well. Hence each network can be monitored by the users themselves. At the same time, large servers sometimes require more storage and this increases the cost since the storage has to be rented or bought exclusively for a server. However, usually peer-to-peer file sharing does not require
6045-624: Is any violation of the exclusive rights of the owner. In U.S. law, these rights include reproduction, preparation of derivative works, distribution of copies by sale or rental, and public performances or displays. In the United States, copyright infringement is sometimes confronted via lawsuits in civil court, against alleged infringers directly or against providers of services and software that support unauthorized copying. For example, major motion-picture corporation MGM Studios filed suit against P2P file-sharing services Grokster and Streamcast for their contributory role in copyright infringement. In 2005,
6200-409: Is generally the responsibility of the copyright holder. However, in several jurisdictions there are also criminal penalties for copyright infringement. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce 's 2021 IP Index, the nations with the lowest scores for copyright protection were Vietnam , Pakistan , Egypt , Nigeria , Brunei , Algeria , Venezuela and Argentina . Copyright infringement in civil law
6355-400: Is not illegal per se and peer-to-peer networks are also used for legitimate purposes. The legal issues in file sharing involve violating the laws of copyrighted material. Most discussions about the legality of file sharing are implied to be about solely copyright material. Many countries have fair use exceptions that permit limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from
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6510-506: Is sometimes permitted, public distribution – by uploading or otherwise offering to share copyright-protected content – remains illegal in most, if not all, countries. For example, in Canada, even though it was once legal to download any copyrighted file as long as it was for noncommercial use, it was still illegal to distribute the copyrighted files (e.g. by uploading them to a P2P network ). Some countries, like Canada and Germany, have limited
6665-485: Is sometimes prosecuted via the criminal justice system. Shifting public expectations, advances in digital technology and the increasing reach of the Internet have led to such widespread, anonymous infringement that copyright-dependent industries now focus less on pursuing individuals who seek and share copyright-protected content online, and more on expanding copyright law to recognize and penalize, as indirect infringers,
6820-734: Is still being used. In copyright law, infringement does not refer to theft of physical objects that take away the owner's possession, but an instance where a person exercises one of the exclusive rights of the copyright holder without authorization. Courts have distinguished between copyright infringement and theft. For instance, the United States Supreme Court held in Dowling v. United States (1985) that bootleg phonorecords did not constitute stolen property. Instead, interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion , or fraud. The Copyright Act even employs
6975-399: Is still possible to find information about that specific user by uncovering his or her past queries and research carried out in a P2P network. Khambatti, Ryu and Dasgupta divide these interests further into three classes: personal, claimed and group attributes. A full set of attributes (common interests) of a specific peer is defined as personal attributes, and is a collection of information
7130-701: Is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States and fair dealings doctrine in the United Kingdom. Some jurisdictions require "fixing" copyrighted works in a tangible form. It is often shared among multiple authors, each of whom holds a set of rights to use or license the work, and who are commonly referred to as rights holders. These rights normally include reproduction, control over derivative works , distribution, public performance , and moral rights such as attribution. Copyrights can be granted by public law and are in that case considered "territorial rights". This means that copyrights granted by
7285-409: Is that no individual, group, or company owns the protocol or the terms "Torrent" or "Bittorrent", meaning that anyone can write and distribute client software that works with the network. The second is that Bittorrent clients have no search functionality of their own. Instead, users must rely on third-party websites like Isohunt or The Pirate Bay to find "torrent" files, which function like maps that tell
7440-584: The BSA , conduct software licensing audits regularly to ensure full compliance. Cara Cusumano, director of the Tribeca Film Festival , stated in April 2014: "Piracy is less about people not wanting to pay and more about just wanting the immediacy – people saying, 'I want to watch Spiderman right now' and downloading it". The statement occurred during the third year that the festival used
7595-614: The Copyright Law in United States , the Copyright Office concluded that many diverse aspects of the current moral rights patchwork – including copyright law's derivative work right, state moral rights statutes, and contract law – are generally working well and should not be changed. Further, the Office concludes that there is no need for the creation of a blanket moral rights statute at this time. However, there are aspects of
7750-637: The European Union require their member states to comply with them. All member states of the World Trade Organization are obliged to establish minimum levels of copyright protection. Nevertheless, important differences between the national regimes continue to exist. The original holder of the copyright may be the employer of the author rather than the author themself if the work is a " work for hire ". For example, in English law
7905-617: The Federal Trade Commission enforcing regulations. US-CERT also warns of the potential risks. Nevertheless, in 2010, researchers discovered thousands of documents containing sensitive patient information on popular peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, including insurance details, personally identifying information, physician names and diagnosis codes on more than 28,000 individuals. Many of the documents contained sensitive patient communications, treatment data, medical diagnoses and psychiatric evaluations. The act of file sharing
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#17327919663148060-533: The Internet , creating a much bigger threat to producer revenue. Some have used digital rights management technology to restrict non-playback access through encryption and other means. Digital watermarks can be used to trace copies, deterring infringement with a more credible threat of legal consequences. Copy protection is used for both digital and pre-Internet electronic media. For a work to be considered to infringe upon copyright, its use must have occurred in
8215-619: The Middle Ages in Europe, there was generally a lack of any concept of literary property due to the general relations of production, the specific organization of literary production and the role of culture in society. The latter refers to the tendency of oral societies, such as that of Europe in the medieval period, to view knowledge as the product and expression of the collective, rather than to see it as individual property. However, with copyright laws, intellectual production comes to be seen as
8370-487: The RIAA are increasingly targeting the file sharing home Internet user. Thus far, however, most such cases against file sharers have been settled out of court. ( See Legal aspects of file sharing ) In most jurisdictions the copyright holder must bear the cost of enforcing copyright. This will usually involve engaging legal representation, administrative or court costs. In light of this, many copyright disputes are settled by
8525-518: The Statute of Anne in 1710, the Stationers' Company of London in 1557, received a royal charter giving the company a monopoly on publication and tasking it with enforcing the charter. Article 61 of the 1994 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) requires criminal procedures and penalties in cases of "willful trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy on
8680-750: The United International Bureaux for the Protection of Intellectual Property signed the Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organizations . In 1996, this organization was succeeded by the founding of the World Intellectual Property Organization , which launched the 1996 WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty and the 2002 WIPO Copyright Treaty , which enacted greater restrictions on
8835-489: The United States or the European Union . In 2004, an estimated 70 million people participated in online file sharing. According to a CBS News poll, nearly 70 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds thought file sharing was acceptable in some circumstances and 58 percent of all Americans who followed the file sharing issue considered it acceptable in at least some circumstances. In January 2006, 32 million Americans over
8990-526: The United States Army settled a lawsuit with Texas -based company Apptricity which makes software that allows the army to track their soldiers in real time. In 2004, the US Army paid the company a total of $ 4.5 million for a license of 500 users while allegedly installing the software for more than 9000 users; the case was settled for US$ 50 million. Major anti-piracy organizations, like
9145-418: The "domain name of an internet connection" which acts as an online location and group identifier for certain users. Cost reduction influences the sharing component of P2P communities. Users who share do so to attempt "to reduce...costs" as made clear by Cunningham, Alexander and Adilov. In their work Peer-to-peer File Sharing Communities , they explain that "the act of sharing is costly since any download from
9300-409: The 1976 Copyright Act to conform to most of the provisions of the Berne Convention. As a result, the use of copyright notices has become optional to claim copyright, because the Berne Convention makes copyright automatic. However, the lack of notice of copyright using these marks may have consequences in terms of reduced damages in an infringement lawsuit – using notices of this form may reduce
9455-446: The Berne Convention, or the adherence of the United States thereto. Before 1989, United States law required the use of a copyright notice, consisting of the copyright symbol (©, the letter C inside a circle; Unicode U+00A9 © COPYRIGHT SIGN ), the abbreviation "Copr.", or the word "Copyright", followed by the year of the first publication of the work and the name of the copyright holder. Several years may be noted if
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#17327919663149610-433: The Berne Convention. As soon as a work is "fixed", that is, written or recorded on some physical medium, its author is automatically entitled to all intellectual property rights in the work, and to any derivative works unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them, or until the rights expires. The Berne Convention also resulted in foreign authors being treated equivalently to domestic authors, in any country signed onto
9765-619: The Consent of the Authors ;... to their very great Detriment, and too often to the Ruin of them and their Families:". A right to benefit financially from the work is articulated, and court rulings and legislation have recognized a right to control the work, such as ensuring that the integrity of it is preserved. An irrevocable right to be recognized as the work's creator appears in some countries' copyright laws. The Copyright Clause of
9920-528: The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 provides that if a copyrighted work is made by an employee in the course of that employment, the copyright is automatically owned by the employer which would be a "Work for Hire". Typically, the first owner of a copyright is the person who created the work i.e. the author . But when more than one person creates the work, then a case of joint authorship can be made provided some criteria are met. Copyright may apply to
10075-448: The Internet through various file transfer systems and other file-sharing networks. The central index server indexed the users and their shared content. When someone searched for a file, the server searched all available copies of that file and presented them to the user. The files would be transferred directly between private computers (peers/nodes). A limitation was that only music files could be shared. Because this process occurred on
10230-547: The Internet to present its content, while it was the first year that it featured a showcase of content producers who work exclusively online. Cusumano further explained that downloading behavior is not merely conducted by people who merely want to obtain content for free: I think that if companies were willing to put that material out there, moving forward, consumers will follow. It's just that [consumers] want to consume films online and they're ready to consume films that way and we're not necessarily offering them in that way. So it's
10385-724: The MPAA was lobbying for a bill which would compel Universities to crack down on piracy, it was admitted by MPAA that its figures on piracy in colleges had been inflated by up to 300%. A 2010 study, commissioned by the International Chamber of Commerce and conducted by independent Paris-based economics firm TERA, estimated that unlawful downloading of music, film and software cost Europe's creative industries several billion dollars in revenue each year. A further TERA study predicted losses due to piracy reaching as much as 1.2 million jobs and €240 billion in retail revenue by 2015 if
10540-455: The P2P system. There are five types of users to be found: users who create services, users who allow services, users who facilitate search, users who allow communication, users who are uncooperative and free ride. In the first instance, the user creates new resources or services and offers them to the community. In the second, the user provides the community with disk space "to store files for downloads" or with "computing resources" to facilitate
10695-613: The RIAA has been to implant decoy users to monitor the use of copyrighted material from a firsthand perspective. In early June 2002, Researcher Nathaniel Good at HP Labs demonstrated that user interface design issues could contribute to users inadvertently sharing personal and confidential information over P2P networks. In 2003, Congressional hearings before the House Committee of Government Reform ( Overexposed: The Threats to Privacy & Security on File Sharing Networks ) and
10850-603: The Senate Judiciary Committee ( The Dark Side of a Bright Idea: Could Personal and National Security Risks Compromise the Potential of P2P File-Sharing Networks? ) were convened to address and discuss the issue of inadvertent sharing on peer-to-peer networks and its consequences to consumer and national security. Researchers have examined potential security risks including the release of personal information, bundled spyware , and viruses downloaded from
11005-586: The Statute of Anne. While the national law protected authors' published works, authority was granted to the states to protect authors' unpublished works. The most recent major overhaul of copyright in the US, the 1976 Copyright Act , extended federal copyright to works as soon as they are created and "fixed", without requiring publication or registration. State law continues to apply to unpublished works that are not otherwise copyrighted by federal law. This act also changed
11160-523: The Supreme Court ruled in favor of MGM, holding that such services could be held liable for copyright infringement since they functioned and, indeed, willfully marketed themselves as venues for acquiring copyrighted movies. The MGM v. Grokster case did not overturn the earlier Sony v. Universal City Studios decision, but rather clouded the legal waters; future designers of software capable of being used for copyright infringement were warned. In
11315-587: The U.S. Punishment of copyright infringement varies case-by-case across countries. Convictions may include jail time and/or severe fines for each instance of copyright infringement. In the United States, willful copyright infringement carries a maximum fine of $ 150,000 per instance. Article 61 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) requires that signatory countries establish criminal procedures and penalties in cases of "willful trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy on
11470-516: The U.S. DMCA , the WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties Implementation Act has provisions that prevent persons from "circumvent[ing] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work". Thus if a distributor of copyrighted works has some kind of software, dongle or password access device installed in instances of the work, any attempt to bypass such a copy protection scheme may be actionable – though
11625-420: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1985 that infringement does not easily equate with theft. This was taken further in the case MPAA v. Hotfile , where Judge Kathleen M. Williams granted a motion to deny the MPAA the usage of words whose appearance was primarily "pejorative". This list included the word "piracy", the use of which, the motion by the defense stated, serves no court purpose but to misguide and inflame
11780-663: The U.S. economy at least $ 29.2 billion in lost revenue each year." An August 2021 report by the Digital Citizens Alliance states that "online criminals who offer stolen movies, TV shows, games, and live events through websites and apps are reaping $ 1.34 billion in annual advertising revenues." This comes as a result of users visiting pirate websites who are then subjected to pirated content, malware, and fraud. According to World Intellectual Property Organisation , copyright protects two types of rights. Economic rights allow right owners to derive financial reward from
11935-530: The US Copyright Office is currently reviewing anticircumvention rulemaking under DMCA – anti-circumvention exemptions that have been in place under the DMCA include those in software designed to filter websites that are generally seen to be inefficient (child safety and public library website filtering software) and the circumvention of copy protection mechanisms that have malfunctioned, have caused
12090-464: The US moral rights patchwork that could be improved to the benefit of individual authors and the copyright system as a whole. Peer-to-peer file sharing Peer-to-peer file sharing is the distribution and sharing of digital media using peer-to-peer (P2P) networking technology. P2P file sharing allows users to access media files such as books, music, movies, and games using a P2P software program that searches for other connected computers on
12245-537: The US. The Berne International Copyright Convention of 1886 finally provided protection for authors among the countries who signed the agreement, although the US did not join the Berne Convention until 1989. In the US, the Constitution grants Congress the right to establish copyright and patent laws. Shortly after the Constitution was passed, Congress enacted the Copyright Act of 1790 , modeling it after
12400-499: The Union to prescribe that works in general or any specified categories of works shall not be protected unless they have been fixed in some material form." Some countries do not require that a work be produced in a particular form to obtain copyright protection. For instance, Spain, France, and Australia do not require fixation for copyright protection. The United States and Canada, on the other hand, require that most works must be "fixed in
12555-639: The United States was 14 years, and it had to be explicitly applied for. If the author wished, they could apply for a second 14‑year monopoly grant, but after that the work entered the public domain , so it could be used and built upon by others. In many jurisdictions of the European continent, comparable legal concepts to copyright did exist from the 16th century on but did change under Napoleonic rule into another legal concept: authors' rights or creator's right laws, from French: droits d'auteur and German Urheberrecht . In many modern-day publications
12710-520: The United States, Constitution (1787) authorized copyright legislation: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." That is, by guaranteeing them a period of time in which they alone could profit from their works, they would be enabled and encouraged to invest the time required to create them, and this would be good for society as
12865-550: The United States, copyright term has been extended many times over from the original term of 14 years with a single renewal allowance of 14 years, to the current term of the life of the author plus 70 years. If the work was produced under corporate authorship it may last 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever is sooner. Article 50 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) requires that signatory countries enable courts to remedy copyright infringement with injunctions and
13020-411: The University of Portsmouth in the UK discussed findings from examining the illegal downloading behavior of 6,000 Finnish people, aged seven to 84. The list of reasons for downloading given by the study respondents included money saving; the ability to access material not on general release, or before it was released; and assisting artists to avoid involvement with record companies and movie studios. In
13175-434: The University of Saskatchewan (Canada), where a P2P application (COMUTELLA) was created and distributed among students. In her view, motivation is "a crucial factor" in encouraging users to participate in an online P2P community, particularly because the "lack of a critical mass of active users" in the form of a community will not allow for a P2P sharing to function properly. Usefulness is a valued aspect by users when joining
13330-561: The age of 12 had downloaded at least one feature-length movie from the Internet, 80 percent of whom had done so exclusively over P2P. Of the population sampled, 60 percent felt that downloading copyrighted movies off the Internet did not constitute a very serious offense, however 78 percent believed taking a DVD from a store without paying for it constituted a very serious offense. In July 2008, 20 percent of Europeans used file sharing networks to obtain music, while 10 percent used paid-for digital music services such as iTunes . In February 2009,
13485-407: The authors even after the authors have transferred their economic rights. In some EU countries, such as France, moral rights last indefinitely. In the UK, however, moral rights are finite. That is, the right of attribution and the right of integrity last only as long as the work is in copyright. When the copyright term comes to an end, so too do the moral rights in that work. This is just one reason why
13640-477: The authors even after the authors have transferred their economic rights. This means that even where, for example, a film producer or publisher owns the economic rights in a work, in many jurisdictions the individual author continues to have moral rights. Recently, as a part of the debates being held at the US Copyright Office on the question of inclusion of Moral Rights as a part of the framework of
13795-640: The beginning of President Obama 's administration when the blueprints to the helicopter Marine One were made available to the public through a breach in security via a P2P file sharing site. Access to this information has the potential of being detrimental to US security. Furthermore, shortly before this security breach, the Today show had reported that more than 150,000 tax returns, 25,800 student loan applications and 626,000 credit reports had been inadvertently made available through file sharing. The United States government then attempted to make users more aware of
13950-495: The book-trade became more common, such that the use of the word 'pirate' itself to describe unauthorized publishing of books was attested to in Nathan Bailey 's 1736 dictionary An Universal Etymological English Dictionary : 'One who lives by pillage and robbing on the sea. Also a plagiary' The practice of labeling the infringement of exclusive rights in creative works as "piracy" predates statutory copyright law. Prior to
14105-700: The calculation of copyright term from a fixed term (then a maximum of fifty-six years) to "life of the author plus 50 years". These changes brought the US closer to conformity with the Berne Convention, and in 1989 the United States further revised its copyright law and joined the Berne Convention officially. Copyright laws allow products of creative human activities, such as literary and artistic production, to be preferentially exploited and thus incentivized. Different cultural attitudes, social organizations, economic models and legal frameworks are seen to account for why copyright emerged in Europe and not, for example, in Asia. In
14260-451: The chief factors that lead to the global spread of media piracy, especially in emerging markets. According to the study, even though digital piracy inflicts additional costs on the production side of media, it also offers the main access to media goods in developing countries. The strong tradeoffs that favor using digital piracy in developing economies dictate the current neglected law enforcement's toward digital piracy. In China as of 2013,
14415-476: The client how to find and download the files that the user actually wants. These two characteristics combined offer a level of decentralization that makes Bittorrent practically impossible to shut down. File-sharing networks are sometimes organized into three "generations" based on these different levels of decentralization. Darknets , including networks like Freenet , are sometimes considered to be third-generation file-sharing networks. Peer-to-peer file sharing
14570-458: The concepts throughout the years have been mingled globally, due to international treaties and contracts, distinct differences between jurisdictions continue to exist. Creator's law was enacted rather late in German speaking states and the economic historian Eckhard Höffner argues that the absence of possibilities to maintain copyright laws in all these states in the early 19th century, encouraged
14725-479: The convention. The UK signed the Berne Convention in 1887 but did not implement large parts of it until 100 years later with the passage of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 . Specially, for educational and scientific research purposes, the Berne Convention provides the developing countries issue compulsory licenses for the translation or reproduction of copyrighted works within the limits prescribed by
14880-605: The convention. This was a special provision that had been added at the time of 1971 revision of the convention, because of the strong demands of the developing countries. The United States did not sign the Berne Convention until 1989. The United States and most Latin American countries instead entered into the Buenos Aires Convention in 1910, which required a copyright notice on the work (such as all rights reserved ), and permitted signatory nations to limit
15035-481: The copyright holder is entitled to enforce their exclusive rights. However, while registration is not needed to exercise copyright, in jurisdictions where the laws provide for registration, it serves as prima facie evidence of a valid copyright and enables the copyright holder to seek statutory damages and attorney's fees. (In the US, registering after an infringement only enables one to receive actual damages and lost profits.) A widely circulated strategy to avoid
15190-524: The copyright holder reserves, or holds for their own use was once required to assert copyright, but that phrase is now legally obsolete. Almost everything on the Internet has some sort of copyright attached to it. Whether these things are watermarked, signed, or have any other sort of indication of the copyright is a different story however. In 1989 the United States enacted the Berne Convention Implementation Act , amending
15345-482: The copyright law of EU member states stems from the Information Society Directive of 2001, which is generally devised to allow EU members to enact laws sanctioning making copies without authorization, as long as they are for personal, noncommercial use. The Directive was not intended to legitimize file-sharing, but rather the common practice of space shifting copyright-protected content from
15500-477: The cost of copyright registration is referred to as the poor man's copyright . It proposes that the creator send the work to themself in a sealed envelope by registered mail, using the postmark to establish the date. This technique has not been recognized in any published opinions of the United States courts. The United States Copyright Office says the technique is not a substitute for actual registration. The United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office discusses
15655-408: The creator dies, depending on the jurisdiction . Some countries require certain copyright formalities to establishing copyright, others recognize copyright in any completed work, without a formal registration. When the copyright of a work expires, it enters the public domain . The concept of copyright developed after the printing press came into use in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. It
15810-710: The culprits. According to an earlier poll, 75 percent of young voters in Sweden (18-20) supported file sharing when presented with the statement: "I think it is OK to download files from the Net, even if it is illegal." Of the respondents, 38 percent said they "adamantly agreed" while 39 percent said they "partly agreed". An academic study among American and European college students found that users of file-sharing technologies were relatively anti-copyright and that copyright enforcement created backlash, hardening pro-file sharing beliefs among users of these technologies. Communities have
15965-409: The destruction of infringing products, and award damages. Some jurisdictions only allow actual, provable damages, and some, like the United States, allow for large statutory damage awards intended to deter would-be infringers and allow for compensation in situations where actual damages are difficult to prove. In some jurisdictions, copyright or the right to enforce it can be contractually assigned to
16120-405: The distribution models that need to catch up. People will pay for the content. In response to Cusumano's perspective, Screen Producers Australia executive director Matt Deaner clarified the motivation of the film industry: "Distributors are usually wanting to encourage cinema-going as part of this process [of monetizing through returns] and restrict the immediate access to online so as to encourage
16275-423: The dramatic costs for bandwidth inherent when providing just a single source. Several factors contributed to the widespread adoption and facilitation of peer-to-peer file sharing. These included increasing Internet bandwidth, the widespread digitization of physical media, and the increasing capabilities of residential personal computers. Users are able to transfer one or more files from one computer to another across
16430-416: The duplication was coincidental, and neither was copied from the other. In all countries where the Berne Convention standards apply, copyright is automatic, and need not be obtained through official registration with any government office. Once an idea has been reduced to tangible form, for example by securing it in a fixed medium (such as a drawing, sheet music, photograph, a videotape, or a computer file),
16585-523: The duration of copyrights to shorter and renewable terms. The Universal Copyright Convention was drafted in 1952 as another less demanding alternative to the Berne Convention, and ratified by nations such as the Soviet Union and developing nations. The regulations of the Berne Convention are incorporated into the World Trade Organization 's TRIPS agreement (1995), thus giving the Berne Convention effectively near-global application. In 1961,
16740-469: The early networks like Gnutella , which popularized the technology in several iterations that used various front ends such as Kazaa , Limewire and WinMX before Edonkey then on to later models like the BitTorrent protocol. Microsoft uses it for Update distribution (Windows 10) and online video games use it as their content distribution network for downloading large amounts of data without incurring
16895-402: The exclusive rights held. The term "freebooting" has been used to describe the unauthorized copying of online media, particularly videos, onto websites such as Facebook , YouTube or Twitter . The word itself had already been in use since the 16th century, referring to pirates, and meant "looting" or "plundering". This form of the word – a portmanteau of " freeloading " and " bootlegging " –
17050-690: The exogenous differential introduction of author's right (Italian: diritto d’autore ) in Napoleonic Italy shows that "basic copyrights increased both the number and the quality of operas, measured by their popularity and durability". The 1886 Berne Convention first established recognition of authors' rights among sovereign nations , rather than merely bilaterally. Under the Berne Convention, protective rights for creative works do not have to be asserted or declared, as they are automatically in force at creation: an author need not "register" or "apply for" these protective rights in countries adhering to
17205-418: The form or manner in which they are expressed. For example, the copyright to a Mickey Mouse cartoon restricts others from making copies of the cartoon or creating derivative works based on Disney's particular anthropomorphic mouse, but does not prohibit the creation of other works about anthropomorphic mice in general, so long as they are different enough not to be judged copies of Disney's. Typically,
17360-1219: The full transaction cost and marginal cost of such sharing even if it "throws a monkey wrench into the particular way in which our society has chosen to pay musicians and re-cording executives. This trades off efficiency for longer-term incentive effects for the recording industry. However, it is efficient within the normal meaning of the term in economics in a way that it would not have been had Jack and Jane used subsidized computers or network connections". A calculation example: with peer to peer file sharing: total cost = filesize customers × cost-per-byte {\displaystyle {\text{total cost}}={\frac {\text{filesize}}{\text{customers}}}\times {\text{cost-per-byte}}} with casual content delivery networks: total cost = filesize × customers × cost-per-byte {\displaystyle {\text{total cost}}={\text{filesize}}\times {\text{customers}}\times {\text{cost-per-byte}}} The economic effect of copyright infringement through peer-to-peer file sharing on music revenue has been controversial and difficult to determine. Unofficial studies found that file sharing had
17515-504: The holder in a civil law court, but there are also criminal infringement statutes in some jurisdictions. While central registries are kept in some countries which aid in proving claims of ownership, registering does not necessarily prove ownership, nor does the fact of copying (even without permission) necessarily prove that copyright was infringed. Criminal sanctions are generally aimed at serious counterfeiting activity, but are now becoming more commonplace as copyright collectives such as
17670-639: The incomes of many academics. Printing brought profound social changes . The rise in literacy across Europe led to a dramatic increase in the demand for reading matter. Prices of reprints were low, so publications could be bought by poorer people, creating a mass audience. In German-language markets before the advent of copyright, technical materials, like popular fiction, were inexpensive and widely available; it has been suggested this contributed to Germany's industrial and economic success. The concept of copyright first developed in England . In reaction to
17825-448: The infringer acted "for the purpose of commercial advantage or private financial gain" ( 17 U.S.C. § 506 ). To establish criminal liability, the prosecutor must first show the basic elements of copyright infringement: ownership of a valid copyright, and the violation of one or more of the copyright holder's exclusive rights. The government must then establish that defendant willfully infringed or, in other words, possessed
17980-404: The instance of the work to become inoperable or which are no longer supported by their manufacturers. According to Abby House Media Inc. v. Apple Inc. , it is legal to point users to DRM-stripping software and inform them how to use it because of lack of evidence that DRM stripping leads to copyright infringement. Whether Internet intermediaries are liable for copyright infringement by their users
18135-408: The issue of digital infringement has not merely been legal, but social – originating from the high demand for cheap and affordable goods as well as the governmental connections of the businesses which produce such goods. There have been instances where a country's government bans a movie, resulting in the spread of copied videos and DVDs. Romanian -born documentary maker Ilinca Calugareanu wrote
18290-419: The jury. The term "piracy" has been used to refer to the unauthorized copying, distribution and selling of works in copyright. In 1668 publisher John Hancock wrote of "some dishonest Booksellers, called Land-Pirats, who make it their practise to steal Impressions of other mens Copies" in the work A String of Pearls: or, The Best Things Reserved till Last by Thomas Brooks . Over time the metaphor mostly used in
18445-416: The law of a certain state do not extend beyond the territory of that specific jurisdiction. Copyrights of this type vary by country; many countries, and sometimes a large group of countries, have made agreements with other countries on procedures applicable when works "cross" national borders or national rights are inconsistent. Typically, the public law duration of a copyright expires 50 to 100 years after
18600-487: The legally recognised rights and interests of others. Most copyright laws state that authors or other right owners have the right to authorise or prevent certain acts in relation to a work. Right owners can authorise or prohibit: Moral rights are concerned with the non-economic rights of a creator. They protect the creator's connection with a work as well as the integrity of the work. Moral rights are only accorded to individual authors and in many national laws they remain with
18755-429: The likelihood of a defense of "innocent infringement" being successful. In the UK, the publisher of a work automatically owns the copyright in the "typographical arrangement of a published work", i.e. its layout and general appearance as a published work. This copyright lasts for 25 years after the end of the year in which the edition containing that arrangement was first published. Copyrights are generally enforced by
18910-523: The maximum number of people to go to the cinema." Deaner further explained the matter in terms of the Australian film industry, stating: "there are currently restrictions on quantities of tax support that a film can receive unless the film has a traditional cinema release." In a study published in the Journal of Behavioural and Experimental Economics , and reported on in early May 2014, researchers from
19065-612: The moral rights regime within the UK is often regarded as weaker or inferior to the protection of moral rights in continental Europe and elsewhere in the world. The Berne Convention, in Article 6bis, requires its members to grant authors the following rights: These and other similar rights granted in national laws are generally known as the moral rights of authors. The Berne Convention requires these rights to be independent of authors' economic rights. Moral rights are only accorded to individual authors and in many national laws they remain with
19220-579: The necessary mens rea . Misdemeanor infringement has a very low threshold in terms of number of copies and the value of the infringed works. The ACTA trade agreement , signed in May 2011 by the United States, Japan, and the EU, requires that its parties add criminal penalties, including incarceration and fines, for copyright and trademark infringement, and obligated the parties to actively police for infringement. United States v. LaMacchia 871 F.Supp. 535 (1994)
19375-732: The network. Some proprietary file sharing clients have been known to bundle malware , though open source programs typically have not. Some open source file sharing packages have even provided integrated anti-virus scanning. Since approximately 2004 the threat of identity theft had become more prevalent, and in July 2008 there was another inadvertent revealing of vast amounts of personal information through P2P sites. The "names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers of about 2,000 of (an investment) firm's clients" were exposed, "including [those of] Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer ." A drastic increase in inadvertent P2P file sharing of personal and sensitive information became evident in 2009 at
19530-490: The operation of the respective central servers, and thus were susceptible to centralized shutdown. Their demise led to the rise of networks like Limewire , Kazaa , Morpheus , Gnutella , and Gnutella2 , which are able to operate without any central servers, eliminating the central vulnerability by connecting users remotely to each other. However, these networks still relied on specific, centrally distributed client programs, so they could be crippled by taking legal action against
19685-424: The owner's permission, often through a license. The owner's use of the property must, however, respect the legally recognised rights and interests of other members of society. So the owner of a copyright-protected work may decide how to use the work, and may prevent others from using it without permission. National laws usually grant copyright owners exclusive rights to allow third parties to use their works, subject to
19840-413: The peer communities in which a particular peer can participate". There are two ways in which these attributes can be classified: explicit and implicit attributes. Explicit values are information that peers provide about themselves to a specific community, such as their interest in a subject or their taste in music. With implicit values, users do not directly express information about themselves, albeit, it
19995-502: The penalties for non-commercial copyright infringement. For example, Germany has passed a bill to limit the fine for individuals accused of sharing movies and series to €800–900. Canada's Copyright Modernization Act claims that statutory damages for non-commercial copyright infringement are capped at C$ 5,000 but this only applies to copies that have been made without the breaking of any "digital lock." However, this only applies to "bootleg distribution" and not non-commercial use. Title I of
20150-563: The potential risks involved with P2P file sharing programs through legislation such as H.R. 1319, the Informed P2P User Act, in 2009. According to this act, it would be mandatory for individuals to be aware of the risks associated with peer-to-peer file sharing before purchasing software with informed consent of the user required prior to use of such programs. In addition, the act would allow users to block and remove P2P file sharing software from their computers at any time, with
20305-603: The potential to increase sales. According to the IP Commission Report the annual cost of intellectual property infringement to the US economy "continues to exceed $ 225 billion in counterfeit goods, pirated software, and theft of trade secrets and could be as high as $ 600 billion." A 2019 study sponsored by the US Chamber of Commerce Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC), in partnership with NERA Economic Consulting "estimates that global online piracy costs
20460-855: The printing of "scandalous books and pamphlets", the English Parliament passed the Licensing of the Press Act 1662 , which required all intended publications to be registered with the government-approved Stationers' Company , giving the Stationers the right to regulate what material could be printed. The Statute of Anne , enacted in 1710 in England and Scotland, provided the first legislation to protect copyrights (but not authors' rights). The Copyright Act of 1814 extended more rights for authors but did not protect British from reprinting in
20615-440: The publishing of low-priced paperbacks for the masses. This was profitable for authors and led to a proliferation of books, enhanced knowledge, and was ultimately an important factor in the ascendency of Germany as a power during that century. After the introduction of creator's rights, German publishers started to follow English customs, in issuing only expensive book editions for wealthy customers. Empirical evidence derived from
20770-484: The rights holders. Such documents include commentary, news reporting, research and scholarship. Copyright laws are territorial- they do not extend beyond the territory of a specific state unless that state is a party to an international agreement. Most countries today are parties to at least one such agreement. In the area of privacy, recent court rulings seem to indicate that there can be no expectation of privacy in data exposed over peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. In
20925-494: The service is not needed anymore, thus free-riding on the network and community resources. Corporations continue to combat the use of the internet as a tool to illegally copy and share various files, especially that of copyrighted music. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been active in leading campaigns against infringers. Lawsuits have been launched against individuals as well as programs such as Napster in order to "protect" copyright owners. One effort of
21080-584: The service providers and software distributors who are said to facilitate and encourage individual acts of infringement by others. Estimates of the actual economic impact of copyright infringement vary widely and depend on other factors. Nevertheless, copyright holders, industry representatives, and legislators have long characterized copyright infringement as piracy or theft – language which some U.S. courts now regard as pejorative or otherwise contentious. The terms piracy and theft are often associated with copyright infringement. The original meaning of piracy
21235-813: The shortcomings of current law that allowed people to facilitate mass copyright infringement while being immune to prosecution under the Copyright Act . Proposed laws such as the Stop Online Piracy Act broaden the definition of "willful infringement", and introduce felony charges for unauthorized media streaming . These bills are aimed towards defeating websites that carry or contain links to infringing content, but have raised concerns about domestic abuse and internet censorship. To an extent, copyright law in some countries permits downloading copyright-protected content for personal, noncommercial use. Examples include Canada and European Union (EU) member states like Poland . The personal copying exemption in
21390-555: The software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade. In Media Piracy in Emerging Economies , the first independent comparative study of media piracy focused on Brazil , India , Russia , South Africa , Mexico , Turkey and Bolivia , "high prices for media goods, low incomes, and cheap digital technologies" are
21545-435: The storage medium. The equivalent for digital online content is a paywall . The introduction of the photocopier , cassette tape , and videotape made it easier for consumers to copy materials like books and music, but each time a copy was made, it lost some fidelity. Digital media like text, audio, video, and software (even when stored on physical media like compact discs and DVDs ) can be copied losslessly, and shared on
21700-659: The subject of debate and further efforts to reform copyright law. In some countries, the personal copying exemption explicitly requires that the content being copied be obtained legitimately – i.e., from authorized sources, not file-sharing networks. In April 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that "national legislation which makes no distinction between private copies made from lawful sources and those made from counterfeited or pirated sources cannot be tolerated." Although downloading or other private copying
21855-408: The technique and notes that the technique (as well as commercial registries) does not constitute dispositive proof that the work is original or establish who created the work. The Berne Convention allows member countries to decide whether creative works must be "fixed" to enjoy copyright. Article 2, Section 2 of the Berne Convention states: "It shall be a matter for legislation in the countries of
22010-402: The terms copyright and authors' rights are being mixed, or used as translations, but in a juridical sense the legal concepts do essentially differ. Authors' rights are, generally speaking, from the start absolute property rights of an author of original work that one does not have to apply for. The law is automatically connecting an original work as intellectual property to its creator. Although
22165-412: The total cost of film piracy in the United States. The MPAA's estimate was doubted by commentators since it was based on the assumption that one download was equivalent to one lost sale, and downloaders might not purchase the movie if illegal downloading was not an option. Due to the private nature of the study, the figures could not be publicly checked for methodology or validity. In January 2008, as
22320-402: The trend continued. Researchers applied a substitution rate of ten percent to the volume of copyright infringements per year. This rate corresponded to the number of units potentially traded if unlawful file sharing were eliminated and did not occur. Piracy rates for popular software and operating systems have been common, even in regions with strong intellectual property enforcement, such as
22475-453: The use of technology to copy works in the nations that ratified it. The Trans-Pacific Partnership includes intellectual property provisions relating to copyright. Copyright laws and authors' right laws are standardized somewhat through these international conventions such as the Berne Convention and Universal Copyright Convention. These multilateral treaties have been ratified by nearly all countries, and international organizations such as
22630-459: The use of their works by others. Moral rights allow authors and creators to take certain actions to preserve and protect their link with their work. The author or creator may be the owner of the economic rights or those rights may be transferred to one or more copyright owners. Many countries do not allow the transfer of moral rights. With any kind of property, its owner may decide how it is to be used, and others can use it lawfully only if they have
22785-433: The users in the beginning", particularly for motivating and getting users into the habit of staying online. This can be done, for example, by providing the system with a wide amount of resources or by having an experienced user provide assistance to a less experienced one. Users participating in P2P systems can be classified in different ways. According to Vassileva, users can be classified depending on their participation in
22940-413: The word to refer to "copying they don't approve of" and that "they [publishers] imply that it is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnapping and murdering the people on them." Copyright holders frequently refer to copyright infringement as theft , "although such misuse has been rejected by legislatures and courts". The slogan " Piracy is theft " was used beginning in the 1980s, and
23095-445: The work has gone through substantial revisions. The proper copyright notice for sound recordings of musical or other audio works is a sound recording copyright symbol (℗, the letter P inside a circle, Unicode U+2117 ℗ SOUND RECORDING COPYRIGHT ), which indicates a sound recording copyright, with the letter P indicating a " phonorecord ". In addition, the phrase All rights reserved which indicates that
23250-450: 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. Copyright infringement disputes are usually resolved through direct negotiation, a notice and take down process, or litigation in civil court . Egregious or large-scale commercial infringement, especially when it involves counterfeiting ,
23405-628: Was a case decided by the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts which ruled that, under the copyright and cybercrime laws effective at the time, committing copyright infringement for non-commercial motives could not be prosecuted under criminal copyright law. The ruling gave rise to what became known as the "LaMacchia Loophole", wherein criminal charges of fraud or copyright infringement would be dismissed under current legal standards, so long as there
23560-436: Was associated with a common law and rooted in the civil law system. The printing press made it much cheaper to produce works, but as there was initially no copyright law, anyone could buy or rent a press and print any text. Popular new works were immediately re- set and re-published by competitors, so printers needed a constant stream of new material. Fees paid to authors for new works were high, and significantly supplemented
23715-533: Was considered in different legal systems, and in the absence of common definitions for "ISPs", "bulletin boards" or "online publishers", early law on online intermediaries' liability varied widely from country to country. The debate has shifted away from questions about liability for specific content, including that which may infringe copyright, towards whether online intermediaries should be generally responsible for content accessible through their services or infrastructure. Copyright#Scope A copyright
23870-518: Was no profit motive involved. The United States No Electronic Theft Act (NET Act), a federal law passed in 1997, in response to LaMacchia, provides for criminal prosecution of individuals who engage in copyright infringement under certain circumstances, even when there is no monetary profit or commercial benefit from the infringement. Maximum penalties can be five years in prison and up to $ 250,000 in fines . The NET Act also raised statutory damages by 50%. The court's ruling explicitly drew attention to
24025-403: Was suggested by YouTuber and podcaster Brady Haran in the podcast Hello Internet . Haran advocated the term in an attempt to find a phrase more emotive than "copyright infringement", yet more appropriate than "theft". Some of the motives for engaging in copyright infringement are the following: Sometimes only partial compliance with license agreements is the cause. For example, in 2013,
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