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Example research essay topic: Intellectual Property Rights Peer To Peer - 2,284 words

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... EU copyright directive forbids peer to-peer, claiming it is an infringement of the directive. But not all the European member states have put into practice the directive in national legislation. Though the member state France initially passed two amendments authorizing the exchange of copies on the internet on December, 22, 2005. Later the French government withdrew its amendments and declared it as illegal any P 2 P client evidently aimed at sharing copyrighted material. European law was constituted from the authors right (droit douceur) tradition, which covers both personal and economic rights.

In Europe, an author, as compared to copyright holder, has a right to claim authorship of the work and to prevent the use of his or her name as the author of any work the author did not make. The author has also has the right to thwart any deliberate mutilation, distortion or modification of the work if such action would injure his or her reputation. The International Convention for the Protection of producers, performers of Phonograms and Broadcasting organisations (Rome Convention) was intended to lodge, by the configuration of neighboring rights, the oddness of vocal works and recordings and their broadcast. (WIPO, 1994). Internet era has made available literary and artistic works on line, their unlawful dissemination among large scale of netizen's has resulted in the new variety of infringements of intellectual properties. Compared with China, in European, there existed more useful method to protect the Internet copyright, especially Internet music. European Union claimed that Internet music services providers need to get just one accredit permission and as the result, it can develop operation in 25 European member countries.

Earlier to this, Internet music service companies wanted to start the business in European Union has to get many copyright permission from music companies, framework of collection copyright tax, music publisher or music author from the every constituent of European Union. The European Directive on Harmonization of copyrights and Related Rights in the information society was introduced in 1997 after the acceptance of the copyright treaty by the EU in Wipo's diplomatic conference of 1996. A new directive on IPR was established which enlarges the authors rights, reproduction and moral rights according to the Berne Convention, by conceding an exclusive right to empower or forbid any communication to the public of their work, by wire or wireless means, including the making available to the public of their works in such a way that member of the public may access them from a place and at a time individually chosen by them to creators of films, works, broadcasts and phonograms. European Union directive defines exemptions that allow reproduction of copyrighted works for shorter period, hence resolves legal problems of temporary storage of copyrighted contents in the computers hard drive and memory during web surfing.

Directives under The performance and Phonograms treaty aims to expand the creators rights to the internet and to other communication media by granting an exclusive right to authorize or prohibit any communications of their works via wire-based and wireless media. EU commission in its recent proposal adopted in July 2005 aims to introduce and align national criminal law provisions against infringements of IPR. Under the scheme, infringements of any intellectual property rights are termed as criminal offence if undertaken deliberately and on a commercial scale. Further, attempting, inciting and aiding such infringements are considered as criminal acts. One of the loophole is that the term commercial scale has not been clearly defined and this may lead to private non-commercial but infringing uses being criminalized as of potentially commercial scale. Thus it is potential if an email intimating the existence of a piece of peer-to-peer software might be construed as an incitement to infringe intellectual property rights.

The EUCD or copyright and related rights regulation 2003 has amended the copyright Designs and Patents Act of 1988 and it being the EUs attempt to update copyright protection to the digital age and prevent software piracy. As per this direction, individual who attempt to make a copy of a copyrighted CD, DVD or music file, whether for back-up or for use on another device such as an MP 3 player are circumventing a Copyright Act. The copy right holders can now initiate action against these infringers who may face up to two years in jail or an unlimited fine and possible civil action from copyright holders. EUCD has been under attack from lawyers and civil liberties groups for adhering too closely the controversial 1998 US Digital Millennium Copyright Act and there by infringing human rights. COPYRIGHT DIRECTIVES IN EUROPEAN UNION: EU has advanced some draft directive which has complex provisions relating to exemptions to rule against infringement and these procedures do not extend to access controls. Article 5 contains permissive measures aimed at balancing the exceptions and limitations to the reproduction right as regards to right of communication to the public and extending its availability to public.

Exceptions are being granted to incidents like excerpts from teaching or scientific research or political or public lectures or for general informatory purpose. Further paragraph 1 refers to the duty of the member state to extend legal safeguards against infringement of any effective technological measures. Likewise, If UK or any other member state wishes to apply any of the limitations found in the Article 5, they may do so subject to requirement that a fair fee be deferred for each use. As regards to the access and pay-per-view business models, EU is contemplating to permit for avoidance of controls and these applicable only if lawful access has been gained to the work.

As the European Union is in the process of its directive on the enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights and this has been termed as nuclear weapons of the copyright law enforcement as this envisages them the privilege to raid homes of alleged infringers and this directive with injunction powers toothed with more power than Digital Millennium Computer Act of US and thus extended to patents and to all negligible, inadvertent and non-commercial infringements of IP. (EU, 2003, Reply, 2004). Forrester Research investigation on the music industry reveals that about 15 % of drop in music sales can be attributed to competition and recession from DVDs and video games. Further Music producing companies and their retailers were fined more than U. S $ 143 million in 2002, after being found culpable of price-fixing CDs.

Creators and owners now demand concept of contributory or vicarious infringement in addition to prosecutions as way of downloading the responsibility of enforcing copyright to Internet Service Providers and this has been termed as essential deputizing of network providers as content police. By the process of digital copying and the power to generate endless facsimile and then circulate numerous replicas of copyrighted material with out loss of quality through web around the globe by click of the mouse and as the result web is being termed as biggest copying machine. Some critics are arguing that professional bootlegging units are located in Western Europe and China being the second in the race. For instance, though the Germany has signed the Berne convention, U. C. convention and the Rome convention, there exists a loophole in the German copyright law which permits some bootleg music records to be sold on the open market.

The West German Supreme Court in 1985 ruled out that music recordings are not safeguarded in Germany if the country where the recording took place did not sign the Rome Convention. Due to this, for a decade the German bootleg manufacturers functioned as if they were lawful music retailers. The court of European Communities in 1993 held that German copyright law infringed the non discrimination provision in the Rome convention and this has made a full stop for the bootleg music CD manufacturers in Germany. This case law is famously known as Phil Collins Case which restricted the German music record manufacturers from bootleg production by bands whose members are from countries in the European community. But Germans circumvented this ruling by manufacturing bootleg from artists who are residents of non-European community nations like Canada, USA, Mexico or the Caribbean. Music downloading in EU: During January, 2003 European Commission has presented a draft directive which recommends punishment for copyright infringement for commercial purposes but spares the home music downloader unharmed thereby exasperating the entertainment industry.

This directive is intended to synchronize intellectual property right enforcement laws in the 15 - nation European Union and seeks to strike a fair balance between interests of the right holders and the opportunities the Internet extends to consumers. Individuals who download the music from the internet at their home and not for commercial purpose will not be infringing the copyright law. Criminal prosecution is applicable only when the infringement is made intentionally and for commercial purposes. Kazaa and Mothers which are offering peer-to-peer file-sharing services which results in copyright infringement and receives advertisement income are termed as commercial practices and it is punishable now under EU directive. Further the commission strongly condemns the piracy and counterfeiting in the music downloading as it costs nearly 17000 jobs annually because these menace.

The commission is of the opinion that piracy and counterfeiting are associated to terrorist activity and organized crime due to high level of profits and low risks of detection and punishment. The incentives for cultural creativity and industrial innovation will be at stake if counterfeiters and pirates are not prosecuted as it amounts to stealing the rights of the creators. The music, video, film and leisure software industries in Europe allege that they loose over 4. 5 billion annually (about US$ 4. 0 billion) as a result of counterfeiting and piracy. The industry critics are of the opinion that European Commission falls short to accomplish its goal of harmonizing its national law on intellectual property rights enforcement in the EU and only concentrating patchwork of different legal procedures and measures across the EU. For the adoption of draft directive, it has to be passed in the European Parliament and the European Unions Council of Ministers meet. In a study to find out the effect of online piracy on the music industry, Stan Liebowitz (2003) reveal that current sales decline in CD can be attributed to the invention of file-sharing technologies and there is no direct relevance of income or price on CD purchases and concludes that MP 3 downloads are ruining the record industry.

The decline in CD sales though mainly correlated to MP 3 downloads; there are other factors that could manipulate the cross-country discrepancy in CD sales. viz. Atmosphere that prevail in music industry which country-specific including flavor for music, offline piracy and the income level of music lovers. Economic and Income atmosphere Available substitutes in the music market Price factor Music quality. The key factors for commercial success of music albums in UK are dependent on factors like promotional campaign, public exposure, artist glamour, initial popularity (. Trucker and Strrobl, 2000).

For success of an album, heavy investments in marketing are required. Cultural goods trade in EU was estimated by 371 billion dollars in 1997 about 4. 3 % of Europe's GDP compared with 177 billion dollars in the US (2. 1 % of its GDP). After the adoption of The Performance and Phonograms Treaty and the copyright treaty by the EU in Wipo's Diplomatic conference, 1996, The European Directive on Harmonization of copyrights and Related in the information Society was initiated in 1997. The EC was worried by the operation of illegal music downloads over the internet and has proposed a new directive on IPR. The process of prosecuting those who down load the illegal music files are same both in USA and in UK. As per IPR, pilfering a CD from a shop and down loading the album from internet leads to infringement.

Since the music available in the internet. As the most of the music available in the internet is guarded by copyright and downloading the same without the copyright owners permission is an infringement under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act, 1988. Due to the stringent provisions of the Copyright Act, music tracks downloaded on a paid-for basis rose to 10 million which is twice than the 2004 figures and this rose from virtually nothing in 2003. Apples i Tune is perhaps is the leading online retailer. File sharing companies are being sued in the past for copyright infringement but there was no success since these companies are not involved in the illegal sharing process and their software can be utilized legally. KaZaA, the internet music file swapping system is being utilized by thousands of children around the world was instructed to alter its software to prevent users infringing copyright by an Australian Court.

The Court observed that the developers of KaZaA were liable for the breach of law since they had authorised music lovers to infringe the applicants copyright by providing features that made illegal file sharing easy LOSS OF EMPLOYMENT: In Denmark, CD sales are down by 20 % and three millions infringers are using unauthorized music files on the internet now which is higher the Napster illegal service in the past, the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) claims. The IFPI urged the EU to tighten the laws on internet piracy and suggested to cut the VAT on music and if the culture of free downloading continues with out check, then it may result in thousands of jobs cut in the music industry in near future. The IFPI reports that about 25 million illegal music files are available for trading on the internet and the EU governments have lost around $ 81 million of tax revenues in 1999 due to music piracy.


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Research essay sample on Intellectual Property Rights Peer To Peer

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