Students' awareness and perceptions regarding copyright infringement

Purpose: The main purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which students of the Dhaka University are aware of the existing copyright law and its infringement. Methodology: Students from different departments of the Dhaka University were the sample population for this study. An online survey was used for collecting data and a questionnaire was designed using Google Forms including both open and close ended questions which was distributed to the students using different social media platforms. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS software and Microsoft Excel. Chi-square and Mann-Whitney U tests were performed to analyze students’ awareness regarding copyright issues.Findings: A total of 260 students participated in the survey. The study showed that 82.6% students are aware of copyright and 80.2% are aware of copyright infringement. 61.2% students violated copyright once or more by plagiarism, photocopy and other means particularly because of the high price and unavailability of the original materials. Most of the students opined that developing citing and referencing practice among students and introducing copyright in university curricula can help in reducing copyright infringement.Research limitations: The study was limited to only one public university of Bangladesh because of time limitation and COVID-19 outbreak.Practical implications: The present study can create greater awareness and respect for copyright law in the university as well as in the whole country.Originality/value: This research is one of the first attempts to study Dhaka University students’ awareness and perceptions regarding copyright infringement and can act as the building block for future research on this topic.

Introducing a Levy Scheme to Online Educational Use of Copyrighted Works

It is common for teachers to use others' copyrighted works for the purpose of teaching. The current copyright law in many nations only exempts educational use in the context of offline classroom teaching. The use of others’ copyrighted material in online teaching may still constitute copyright infringement. To protect teachers from the chilling effect of copyright infringement, to safeguard the public's freedom to obtain knowledge, and to ensure the commensurability of the profits and responsibilities of online teaching platforms, this paper proposes a levy scheme for online teaching. Under the levy scheme, teachers are free to use others’ published work for the purpose of online teaching, provided that such use does not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and does not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interest of the copyright owner. Online teaching platforms should remunerate the copyright owner of the work used in the platform according to the number of participants of the course that uses such work.

Protecting video games against online copyright infringement: a Russian approach to site blocking

Throughout recent years Russia has developed a strong anti-piracy and site blocking laws which claim to become effective tools against an ongoing issue of video game piracy. Thousands of pirate torrent indexing websites, illegal marketplaces with unauthorized digital goods and in-game values are shut down yearly by video game right holders in order to prevent illegal content consumption. Torrent sites loose up to 90% of traffic quickly after blocking measures are implemented. However, if the law is too good to be true, it most probably is. The strict domain-specific site blocking approach has been an ongoing issue and an obstacle for right holders to tackle site blocking circumvention tools from Russia. Most pirate sites hop to a new domain name after the right holder obtains first content-removal order making it impossible to sue the website for repeated copyright infringement. The dynamic site blocking approach developed within European case law and best practices may become a potential solution to this problem.

Proposals for copyright law and education during the COVID-19 pandemic

This article asks whether the catastrophic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic justifies new limitations or interventions in copyright law so that UK educational institutions can continue to serve the needs of their students. It describes the existing copyright landscape and suggests ways in which institutions can rely on exceptions in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA), including fair dealing and the exemption for lending by educational establishments. It then considers the viability of other solutions. It argues that issues caused by the pandemic would not enliven a public interest defence to copyright infringement (to the extent this still exists in UK law) but may be relevant to remedies. It also argues that compulsory licensing, while permissible under international copyright law, would not be a desirable intervention, but that legislative expansion to the existing exceptions, in order to encourage voluntary collective licensing, has a number of attractions. It concludes by observing that the pandemic highlights issues with the prevailing model for academic publishing and asks whether COVID may encourage universities to embrace in-house and open access publishing more swiftly and for an even greater body of material.

Legislative regulation of publishing in Ukraine

Keywords: creative industries, publishing, book publishing, copyright, IP rights,copyright infringement, IP legislation Publishing is animportant element for the development of many areas of human activity. The impactof publishing on culture, education and tourism in any country cannot be underestimated.Publishing is of great importance for the development of literature, both withinone country and in the world as a whole.Today, publishing faces many challenges, including piracy, the difficulty of distributingdigital copies of literary works and insufficient funding, along with a relativelylow interest in legal publications. However, publishing is defined in Ukraine as a creativeindustry and now the state's position on strengthening publishing as an industryin Ukraine is becoming more active. That is why the issues of legislative regulationof activities in this area, as well as its connection with intellectual propertyrights, are relevant. The creation of the list of economic activities that belong to the creative industries in Ukraine indicates the government's intention to graduallytransfer Ukraine's economy to a more modern model, where industries related to thecreative industries are of the greatest importance for the economy and the developmentof the state as a whole.The article is devoted to the issue of publishing legislative regulation in Ukraine.The author analyses the most important laws in this area, considering publishing primarilyas a creative industry. The state policy in this sphere is considered, which isdirected first on development of publishing and on support of publishing the Ukrainian-language editions.The author points out the existence of certain differences in the legislative regulationof book publishing and publishing of the periodicals in Ukraine.The article considers the data of the Ukrainian Book Institute on the current stateof publishing in Ukraine. According to these data, one of the biggest problems in thepublishing is the significant number of copyright infringements and IP rights infringementsin general.Given the high rate of copyright infringement and IP rights in general in the publishing,it is necessary to review the mechanism of influence on combating them, aswell as increase liability for such infringements.

Strict liability within the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act 2011

<p>This paper examines strict liability within the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing Amendment Act 2011. Prior to the act, enforcing copyright infringement by file sharing was unrealistic due to detection, evidentiary and authorisation problems. The Act resolved these problems by imposing strict liability in the form of vicarious liability and evidentiary presumptions. First, it explores the decision to hold account holders vicariously liable for end user infringements in relation to policy considerations and fact patterns arising in Copyright Tribunal decisions. In doing so, it highlights ways in which injustice may be avoided. Second, it explores the evidentiary presumptions, the underlying policy rationale for their inclusion and the Copyright Tribunal’s application of them. Ultimately, it argues that there is good reason to remove the evidentiary presumptions.</p>