Scientific and Critical Editions of Public Domain Works: Another Example of European Copyright Law (Dis)Harmonization

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Margoni
Keyword(s):  
Public Domain ◽  
Copyright Law ◽  
Critical Editions

Creative Choices: Changes to Australian Copyright Law and the Future of the Public Domain

2005 ◽  
Vol 114 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Moore
Keyword(s):  
Free Trade Agreement ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Current Model ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Copyright Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
Creative Commons ◽  
Extended Duration

Changes to Australian copyright law introduced under the Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement will diminish the public domain, criminalise common copyright infringing practices and locally introduce significant portions of the controversial 1998 American Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This paper examines these imminent changes to Australian copyright law, with specific attention to the potential effects of the extended duration of copyright protection and the introduction of technological anti-circumvention measures. It argues that public domain-enhancing activities are crucial for sustaining cultural creativity and technological innovation, and discusses the potential role of the Creative Commons movement in establishing economically viable and legal alternatives to the current model of trade-oriented copyright reform.

scholarly journals Property on the Line: Life on the Frontier between Copyright and the Public Domain

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Graeme W Austin
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Copyright Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Line Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
Inaugural Lecture ◽  
Creativity And Innovation ◽  
The Relationship

This article is an edited transcript of Professor Graeme W Austin's Inaugural Lecture, delivered in the Council Chamber of Victoria University of Wellington on 15 November 2012. Professor Austin was appointed Chair in Private Law in the Faculty of Law in November 2010. This lecture explores claims that in copyright law, the public domain is necessarily in opposition to proprietary rights, and suggests that in many contexts the incentives offered by copyright contribute to the vibrancy and volume of material that is available for downstream creativity and innovation. Drawing on his earlier work on the relationship between human rights law and intellectual property, Professor Austin's lecture advances the idea that cognisance of the human rights dimensions of intellectual property, including creators' human rights, should inform our understanding of the appropriate scope of the rights of copyright owners. The lecture concludes with a warning against the "Walmartization" of copyright.

Theoretical and Philosophical Foundations

2014 ◽  
pp. 33-56
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Copyright Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Moral Rights ◽  
The Public ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
Public Benefit ◽  
Utilitarian Approach ◽  
The Public Sphere

This chapter deals with the theoretical foundation of copyright law and considers the various philosophical theories in this regard. The link between copyright law and the philosophical ideals that underpin its theory and interpretation is noted and considered within the ambits of the public sphere as proposed by Habermas (1974, p. 49). The discussion also includes an explanation of the public domain and focuses on the following theories in particular: the utilitarian approach, the public benefit theory, the natural rights theory, and the moral rights theory. The chapter concludes by comparing the theories and noting their alignment and differences.

scholarly journals A Rights-Based View of the Idea/ Expression Dichotomy in Copyright Law

2003 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abraham Drassinower
Keyword(s):  
Public Domain ◽  
Copyright Law ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Law

The paper offers a rights-based, Kantian interpretation of the idea/expression dichotomy in the law of copyright. It demonstrates that the idea/expression dichotomy normatively structures the relation between the parties to a copyright action in terms of their equal rights to authorship. To the extent that the defendant has not copied the plaintiff’s expression but has instead expressed an idea anew, the defendant has exercised her own authorship. The limits of the plaintiff’s right (i.e. the law’s refusal to copyright ideas) are therefore the contours of a public domain that, as a matter of equality, the plaintiff himself must be held to recognize. The public domain is not externally imposed upon but internally constitutive of authorial right. Thus the paper shows that a Kantian understanding of the fundamentals of copyright questions the perceived opposition between authorial right and public domain that informs much of contemporary copyright discourse. In so doing, the paper establishes the largely neglected possibility of a rights-based defense of the public domain.

scholarly journals “UNE CHOSE PUBLIQUE”? THE AUTHOR’S DOMAIN AND THE PUBLIC DOMAIN IN EARLY BRITISH, FRENCH AND US COPYRIGHT LAW

2006 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 636-670 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane C. Ginsburg
Keyword(s):  
Public Domain ◽  
Copyright Law ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
The Public ◽  
Moral Claims ◽  
Cultural Commons ◽  
The Mind

THE public domain is all the rage. It is invoked to breach copyright’s encroaching enclosure of what one might grandiloquently call the cultural commons of the mind. The heralds of our “remix culture” deploy the public domain to smash that icon of the entertainment–industrial complex, the Romantic Author. But even before the Author became Romantic, he still served as a shill for concentrated industry, then the printing–bookselling complex. Authors’ moral claims of labourious entitlement merely masked the power grab of the printers. If we speak of a grab, we imply that copyright was seised from somewhere. So whence, in this account, was copyright wrested? From the public domain.

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