- Collective administration of copyright and neighbouring and relating rights Key words: collective administration; copyright This thesis is focused on collective management of copyright and related rights carried out in accordance with copyright law and EU law. The aim of the manuscript is to explain this topic and to provide a review of collective management and its modification in accordance to European law. The thesis is divided into eight chapters each containing a specific aspect of collective management of copyright and related laws. First chapter is dedicated to the basic definition and concept of collective management and the anchoring and adjustment in the Czech legal order. Moreover, there are discussed the purpose and effectiveness of the institute of collective management, the conditions imposed on the collective administrator and how collective administrator authorization is declare and finally, progress and possibilities of supervision over collective management. Second chapter is focused on the activities of collective administrator. The most important work obligations of collective administrator are analyzed e.g. blanket and collective licenses and also the management of revenues from collective management. Third chapter deals with the object of collective management and...

En Chine, la protection du droit d’auteur dans l’environnement numérique est un problème au niveau international et national. Pourquoi le droit d’auteur ne peut-il pas être protégé correctement ? Quels sont les droits et les outils mis à la disposition des auteurs ? Sous la pression de la rétorsion commerciale des États-Unis, la Chine a ratifié la Convention de Berne en 1992. Le premier droit d’auteur en Chine et les deux révisions avaient principalement pour but de se conformer à la Convention de Berne. Autrement dit, le droit d’auteur chinois est artificiel. Il ne représente pas la réconciliation de conflits d'intérêts différents. Les actions de la mise en œuvre du droit d’auteur en environnement numérique ont été entreprises par les autorités chinoises. Elles pourraient être très efficaces. Des sites Internet illégaux sont contrôlés et le contenu qui atteint au droit d’auteur est supprimé. Néanmoins, les actions pourraient être excessives. L’environnement numérique a non seulement augmenté la capacité individuelle de la reproduction et la transmission des œuvres, mais a aussi changé la façon dont les œuvres peuvent être créées. Comment protéger les droits d’auteur existants, d’un côté, et stimuler la créativité individuelle des internautes, d’un autre côté ? / Chinese copyright protection in the digital environment has been a problem at both international and national level. Why Chinese copyright could not be properly protected?What rights and enforcement tools the copyright holders have? Under the pressure of the US trade retaliation, China ratified the Berne Convention in 1992. The first Chinese Copyright Law and the later two revisions were mainly for the purpose of complying with the Berne Convention. In other words, the Chinese Copyright Law is artificial. It is not the reconciliation of the conflicts of different interests. Copyright enforcement actions have been undertaken by the Chinese copyright authorities in the digital environment. They could be very efficient. Major pirating websites are seized and enormous infringing contents are taken down. However, the actions could also be excessive. The digital environment not only boosted the individual capacity of the reproduction and transmission of works, but also changed the way of how works could be created. How to protect the existing copyright on the one hand, to simulate the individual user’s creativity, on the other?

This dissertation investigates whether the needs of persons with sensory disabilities are accommodated in South African copyright law. Of the approximately 44,8 million people in South Africa counted in Census 2001, 2,3 million were reported as disabled. Of these, 577 000 (1,3 per cent) had a visual disability, 314 000 (0,7 per cent) a hearing disability, whilst others had physical, intellectual and communication disabilities, some with multiple disabilities too. Persons with sensory disabilities, such as visual, hearing and related impairments, experience barriers to accessing information on a daily basis. The dissertation explores barriers in the copyright law and seeks ways to remedy the situation so as to facilitate access to information, particularly for educational, personal and other purposes. To contextualise this research, international and regional copyright trends are explored to establish whether intellectual property agreements allow copyright limitations and exceptions for persons with sensory disabilities in national laws. In addition, the copyright laws of a large number of countries that have already adopted appropriate limitations and exceptions nationally are reviewed. The dissertation highlights the lack of attention that the access needs of persons with sensory disabilities have been afforded in the Copyright Act 98 of 1978, as well as related inadequacies in the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002. South Africa’s non-compliance with certain international and national obligations relating to human rights and access to information is also highlighted within the context of copyright law. International human rights conventions, the South African Constitution and domestic anti-discriminatory laws all provide the framework for protecting the rights of persons with disabilities, yet their rights to access to knowledge have been neglected by government and the legislature. Some recommendations for further research and possible amendments to the copyright law are provided

Thesis advisor: Richard Spinello / Thesis advisor: Stephen Pope / The information revolution is the single most important change in society since the printing press. At no other time has our society benefited from nearly limitless access to information and communication, and the changes brought on by this access have changed, and are changing, society in fundamental ways. Our homes, our workplaces, and our democracy have all been transformed by information and communication technologies.However, our ethics have not kept pace with our technological progress, and the immense changes brought by this this revolution have posed some equally immense moral questions. Indeed, there has been an almost total lack of religious discourse regarding the problems which have arisen out of the information revolution. This thesis is an attempt to change that.The thesis itself is structured as a series of essays on four key problems:1. Intellectual Property, as it relates to Scripture2. Information Ethics, the novel moral theory arising from Computer Ethics3. Robotic Ethics, especially the ethics of robotic warfare4. Hacker Culture, and its implicit spiritualityEach of these essays attempts to tackle one of these key problems, and demonstrate how a religious perspective illuminates some aspect of it. As befits a thesis from a Jesuit, Catholic university, most of the essays are drawn from a Catholic, Christian perspective. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology Honors Program. / Discipline: Philosophy Honors Program. / Discipline: Theology.

This thesis aims to provide a novel approach to ensure copyright compliance online, appropriate for the Internet of Things and the robotic revolution. To achieve this, three different aims are pursued: - A novel application of “by design” solutions to copyright protection is introduced and its advantages and disadvantages discussed from a jurisprudential and doctrinal perspective. - On the basis of this, a new theoretical framework for legal AI is developed that draws on Andy Clark’s “extended mind” model of cognition. - This then leads to a new way for implementing legal knowledge and cognition in expert systems, and an outline implementation of this approach is introduced and discussed. The Internet and the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) revolution has delivered important social benefits that had reshaped our conception of the world by expanding knowledge and culture. However, its dynamic nature and technical composition had made it attractive for the commission of illegal activities also. One of the areas that have experienced this combined effect is the creative industry. The Internet has enhanced its capacity to reach new markets, distribute their material digitally, has allowed aspiring artists to disseminate their work to large audiences and has even incentivised the development of novel techniques to create new material. Nevertheless, it has also allowed unauthorized access and distribution of copyrighted materials, causing economic harms on a considerable scale. Traditional legal responses -punishment after a criminal act- proved incapable to provide a deterrent effect to these activities, mostly due to the capacity of infringers to adapt to the operational particularities of cyberspace. The difficulty to enforce copyright in cyberspace, outside national jurisdictions and with easier and faster ways of replication of material, led to the development of a new paradigm of enforcement: automated enforcement by software code. Here, automated enforcement is delivered by embedding copyright law directly into software code: Digital Rights Management, commonly known as DRM was the first adopter of this approach. These programs provided restricted access, based solely on the rights granted by the author or the rights holder in relation to a particular work. This, arguably, had the potential of reducing the possibilities of unlawful use. But it also prevented some forms of legal use, especially those exceptions to copyright granted by statute. Despite the positive expectations around DRM, it therefore did not have the expect success. The thesis will discuss some of the lessons that can be learned from this relative failure. One result will be a discussion if these systems were “too dumb” to present truly regulation by code, and if this contributed to their failure. However, the failure of these early devices does not necessarily mean the end of the collaboration between copyright law and technology. The concept of “law as computer code” was addressed from other technological approaches suitable of operating without the issues presented on DRM. The thesis argues therefore that robotic technology is a novel application for the implementation of automated enforcement of copyright law. In this scenario, artificial creators require the capacity to understand and replicate human cognitive processes used during the creation of artistic works. This includes the detection and lawful management of relevant features contained in already existing works. To avoid this situation, these devices need the capacity to adapt their behaviour based on the legal status of a relevant work to reduce the risk of performing copyright infringing conducts. This represents a significant advance in relation to traditional devices: legal compliance is delivered through a preventive, non-punishing scheme, which presents an effective method to protect digital material on the cyberspace. Additionally, this research addresses, but to a lesser degree, the impact of computer-generated works on the legal framework. It is a very well established principle that copyright protects human creativity and spontaneity, and one can ask if such characteristics are attributable to a computer. This has left these creations outside of the protective scope of most legal systems. This also means the development of an international approach is a difficult task. This research will demonstrate how legal ontologies can help to address this problem. Among the novel aspect of the thesis, the combination of computational legal reasoning and theory of legal cognition stands out. In this sense, traditional implementations of legal artificial intelligence aimed to replicate the reasoning processes performed by a judge as part of a trial or similar formal legal procedures. This means a high degree of legal accuracy was required, which in turn necessitated a considerable amount of time and resources to develop a formal reasoner and knowledge base. Contrary to this, cognitive operations performed by ordinary humans are rarely a straightforward process, they require the capacity to interact with the environment and leave little time for complex reasoning processes. Instead, citizens implement a series of cognitive strategies that involve interaction with the environment, cognitive shortcuts and the implementation of preconceived responses. This can be seen in a variety of scenarios, for example, in the presence of an image of a camera crossed by a diagonal line indicates to us that the action of taking photographs is not allowed and it probably carries a legal consequence; a closed door signals a prima facie prohibition to enter that space without a key etc. These actions allow us to operate law compliantly in a dynamic social environment without performing unnecessary complex legal processes or the constant conseil of an attorney. The research presented in this thesis, aims to define if this intuitive reasoning about the law in open scenarios, can be implemented in computational legal systems. Finally, this thesis concludes that by delivering intelligent technology the capacity to replicate legal cognitive processes, automated enforcement of copyright law can be achieved.

The main objective of this thesis is to describe the Internet piracy phenomenon and to define responsibility of individuals for copyright violations on the Internet from the view of valid Czech legislation. In order to prevent Internet piracy, countries are pushed to swiftly react on continuous development of new technologies used by pirates - these efforts of individual countries are described in several chapters of this thesis that are exploring the most significant court rulings. These rulings have or may eventually have impact on the legislation or approach to the piracy of other countries. This thesis consists of ten chapters. First chapter gives an introduction to the Internet piracy problem. It claims that copyright violation on the Internet might nowadays be the most common unlawful deed. Second chapter provides definitions of three terms which are later frequently used in the thesis. These terms are: work of authorship, Internet, Internet piracy. Third chapter explores copyright and its content (personal and economic rights of the author). Next chapter analyses the legal means of protection of the work of authorship. These means are provided by various areas of law (copyright law, administrative law, criminal law etc.). Fifth chapter explains functioning of peer-to-peer networks which are...

The current scholarship on copyright predominantly considers this area of law from the standpoint of economics. Likewise, since the adoption of the TRIPs Agreement, contemporary copyright law-making and practice has mainly been constructed around the assumption that its job is to create incentives to make more expressive works in the form of copyright embedded in goods and investment. Copyright law has heavily skewed towards the protection of corporate copyright ownership rather than individual authorship. In this model, culture is seen as the marketplace for merchandising and producing the products of copyright industries and an economic space facilitating the process of creativity. Intellectual properties are said be essential assets in firms’ portfolios and an important component in the macro-economic development of a country. Thus, current copyright law has predominantly an economic-oriented model that shapes its cultural and development policies. This thesis offers an alternative framework for copyright law focusing not on economic development alone but on more broadly promoting human development and one of its predominant framework, namely the ‘capabilities approach’, to transform the ‘controlled culture’ that individuals live in to a ‘fair culture’. Thus, this study’s central research questions are: How could western (UK, EU, and US) copyright laws’ economic-oriented development and culture visions be reshaped through the capabilities approach and ‘participatory culture’ considerations in order to enhance participation in culture? And what legal resolutions and remedies could be drawn from the fundamental rights framework (specifically from the right to take part in cultural life and freedom of expression) to make such a shift in copyright laws? Freedom is a crucial value in the construction of a fair culture within copyright. Inspiration here is Amartya Sen’s concept of ‘development as freedom’ and Martha Nussbaum’s idea to rationalise these freedoms as touchstone values in constitutional entitlements. To promote ‘development as freedom’, in Amartya Sen’s words, copyright law cannot be detached from the considerations of fostering people’s capabilities to participate in cultural and political life. Therefore, the main contention of this thesis is that copyright law does more than encouraging the creation of more commodities and investment: it fundamentally affects human development and substantive freedoms, or capabilities, of all people to live a good life in a democratic culture and society. The challenge that this thesis posits is how to bring the politics of human dignity and the politics of welfare into a single framework within copyright law. To this end, the capability-oriented human rights assessment of copyright law is brought to open a fresh discussion over the conventional wisdom mentioned above. To replace the existing ‘culture and economic development model’ with the ‘culture and human development model’, this study identifies capabilities or substantive freedoms (cultural human rights and freedoms), as a way of evaluating copyright law’s goals in general and its impact on individuals’ capabilities to freely express themselves and participate in cultural and political life. As an alternative to traditional development measures, Sen and Nussbaum propose the concept of the advancement of ‘central capabilities’ in which capabilities represent ‘what people are actually able to do and to be’. This inquiry aims at creating a synergy between the ‘capabilities approach’and human rights framework through the identification of relevant capability-based cultural human rights and freedoms to set a normative base for the construction of a fair culture. Again from a capabilities perspective, this thesis further analyses some contemporary issues surrounding contemporary copyright enforcement measures - namely notice-and-4 takedown and graduated response procedures, file sharing, disclosure orders, filtering and website blocking orders, the extension of copyright terms, pre-established/statutory and additional damages, technological protection measures and the intermediary liability, the extension of criminal liability and notice-and-staydown - where the tension between copyright law and cultural human rights and freedoms are more acute. This helps to identify the important cultural netibilities (freedoms/capabilities on the Internet) in a networked world. In the final analysis, this thesis proposes two frameworks, one for legislators and one for courts, to engage with these cultural human rights and freedoms which are of importance for the advancement of human development. In the former framework, the copyright rules laid down by the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement are discussed as a case study to show more concretely how copyright law affects human development and to make proposals for future direction of treaty and law-making with respect to it. The second framework, by fundamentally relying on the legal test proposed by Abbe Brown in her book “Intellectual Property, Human Rights and Competition: Access to Essential Innovation and Technology,” aims to complete this thesis with the introduction of a legal test (deconstructive multiple proportionally test) for courts to engage with a conflict of norms between human rights and copyright, which will make them take cognisance of human development paradigm, when such a conflict is encountered.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

A digital watermark is a message robustly hidden within another digitized signal such as an image, a piece of music, a video, etc. . The principal applications of this technology are copyright protection and document fingerprinting. The robustness of watermarking algorithms against common geometrical deformations has drawn the attention of many researchers in the last ten years. Such distortions can result from usual processing of the media and/or malicious manipulations. As an example, a major concern for digital cinema industry is the illicit copy of movies with video cameras taking place in movie theaters. In this scenario, severe geometric distortions can jeopardize the retrieval of the watermark message from the illicit copies. The limitations and weaknesses of the previously proposed solutions to fight these distortions are presented. We developed a generalized construction method for periodic pseudo-random patterns. Based on these patterns, we designed a spread spectrum watermarking scheme with enhanced security properties. We investigated the detection probability and the interaction between exhaustive search and informed coding strategies. Finally, a scheme for the detection of a periodic structure and for the inversion of affine distortions was presented. We showed that the choice of the periodic repetition size involves a trade-off between robustness and secrecy. Thereafter, we studied the security flaw caused by the lack of secrecy in pilot-registration approaches. We proposed an innovative hiding scheme to remedy this issue. Our solution involves the extraction of robust local references from the content of the cover signal. Using this content normalized interpretation, we showed how one can design robust secret binary mask and modulate pilot signals in watermarking schemes. The efficiency of the approach is demonstrated on pilots derived from periodic structures. We also addressed the assessment of the degradation introduced by a geometrical distortion. We assume that a global rigid transform does not impair the perceptual value of an image and we propose a new criterion based on a local analysis of the geometrical deformations.

In March 1991 the World Intellectual Property Organization held an international symposium attended primarily by lawyers, to discuss the questions that artificial intelligence poses for intellectual property law (i.e., copyright and patents). This is an edited version of a talk presented there, which argues that AI poses few problems in the near term and that almost all the truly challenging issues arise instead from software in general. The talk was an attempt to bridge the gap between the legal community and the software community, to explain why existing concepts and categories in intellectual property law present such difficult problems for software, and why software as a technology breaks several important assumptions underlying intellectual property law.