The increasingly accelerating process of integration in the whole European area causes a tremendous amount of problems in different sections of social, economic and political life. The solutions to all these integration related problems have one thing in common: they all need to be based on a solid ground of EU-laws, which are applied and enforced in every Member State. This so important because otherwise the measures taken by the EU institutions are completely useless. That leads to the observation that in every area of conflicts due to the application of different domestic laws a harmonisation is required. Harmonising EU laws adopted by the competent EU institutions have a crucial key role in the achievement of complete integration of every Member State in every conflict area, whatever that might be. One of these areas is the protection of copyrights. The value of the protection of copyrights must not be underestimated. The EU Commission assessed that the contribution of the copyright-related products and services to the EU-wide gross national product is about 5 %. In contradiction to this great value of copyright-related products and services the EU institutions started very late to scrutinise the different issues which might have to be solved in this context. Especially the issues, which are due to different levels of protection of copyrights in different Member States, started being solved by the adoption of harmonising directives. The first directive was adopted on 14 May 1991. This dissertation intends to scrutinise the commencement and the continuity of the harmonisation process in the area of copyrights in the EU. This scrutiny shall be embedded in the context of the development of the European Union as a such and the functioning of its institutions and the harmonisation of laws in the EU in general. A sound overview about these different areas of the European Union and the process of harmonisation concerning the harmonisation of national copyright laws shall be given.

published_or_final_version / Law / Master / Master of Laws

The enforceability and legitimacy of copyright law on the internet have been the subjects of several scholarly works. However, there were few studies that outlined the regulatory models available for the online world with respect to copyright policy. The main thesis of this study is that copyright law can be effectively used and enforced in an electronic environment through co-regulation. The author examines the theoretical underpinnings of copyright and droit d'auteur and argues that a global copyright is now being created. Stemming from this first conclusion, he attempts to show how, worldwide, the means of traditional regulation as well as self-regulation present several shortcomings when confronted with the criteria of legitimacy and enforceability. Rather, it is argued that a third option ought to be considered, one that consists of an effective mix between private and public spheres. Co-regulation appears indeed to address the problems raised by the use of other regulatory models while deferring to copyright policy.

Zugl.: Kiel, Univ., Diss., 2008

Thesis (LL. M.)--University of Toronto, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Dartmouth College, Thayer School of Engineering, 1997. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Dartmouth College, Thayer School of Engineering, 1997. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record.

No description available.

Note:

No description available.