Encyclopaedia Britannica (1991, p.616) says copyright is designed primarily to protect an artist, publisher, or other owner against any unauthorised copying of his works – as by reproducing the work in any material form, publishing it, performing it in public, filming it, broadcasting it, causing it to be distributed to subscribers, or making any adaptation of the work. A copyright supplies a copyright holder with a kind of monopoly over the created material, which assures him of both control over its use and the pecuniary benefit derived from it (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991, p.616). Overall copyright is designed to protect the rights of the copyright holder. These rights are different from the rights given to a person who merely owns a copy of the work.
Under The Copyright Act the granted five exclusive rights of a copyright holder are:
(Bitlaw, http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/scope.html, and Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright ).
1. The reproduction right is perhaps the most important right granted by The Copyright Act (Bitlaw, 2004). Under this right, no one other than the copyright owner may make any reproductions or copies of the work (Bitlaw, 2004). Such examples of unauthorised acts which are prohibited under the reproduction right include photocopying a book, plagiarising a computer software program, using a cartoon character on a t-shirt, and incorporating a portion of another’s song into a new song.
2. The right to make a derivative work often overlaps with the reproduction right. Bitlaw (2004) says a derivative work usually involves a type of transformation, such as the transformation of a novel into a motion picture. An example of derivative work in the computer industry is a second version of a software program, this is generally considered a derivative work based upon the earlier version.
3. The distribution right grants to the copyright holder the exclusive right to make a work available to the public by sale, rental, lease, or lending (Bitlaw, 2004). This right allows the copyright holder to prevent the distribution of unauthorised copies of a work. In addition, the right allows the copyright holder to control the first distribution of a particular authorised copy (Bitlaw, 2004).
4. The public performance right allows the copyright holder to control the public performances of the certain copyrighted works (Bitlaw, 2004). Under the public performance right, a copyright holder is allowed to control when the work is performed ‘publicly’. A performance is considered ‘public’ when the work is performed in a ‘place open to the public or at a place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of family and its social acquaintances are gathered’ (Heinemann Australian Dictionary, 1990, p.852).
5. The public display right is similar to the public performance right, except that this right controls the public ‘display’ of a work (Bitlaw, 2004). The definition of when a work is displayed ‘publicly’ is the same as that described above in connection with the right of public performance.
The phrase ‘exclusive right’ means that the copyright holder and only the copyright holder is allowed to do these things (Wikipedia, 2004). This means that everyone else is prohibited from doing them without the copyright holder’s consent. Wikipedia (2004) often refers to copyright as a negative right, to stress that it has less to do with permitting people (e.g. authors) to do anything, and more to do with prohibiting people (e.g. readers, viewers, or listeners) from doing something: reproducing the copyrighted work. However these rights are not without limit, as they are specifically limited by ‘fair use’ and several other specific limitations set forth in The Copyright Act.
References
Bitlaw: A Resource on Technology Law (2004) “Rights Granted Under Copyright Law,� retrieved September 20, 2004, from http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/scope.html
Encyclopaedia Britannica (1991) Sydney: Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc.
Heinemann Australian Dictionary (1990) Port Melbourne: Heinemann Educational Australia.
Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopaedia (2004) “Copyright: rights of the copyright holder,� retrieved September 6, 2004, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
Julie Bui 14:51, 28 Oct 2004 (EST)
