Maintaining a fair balance between individuals’ interests and the public interest is arguably believed to be the most effective approach in serving the ultimate objective of copyright: to promote social, economic and cultural development for the benefit of both rightsholders and the public at large. Through this balanced approach, creativity can be maximised and thrive better than by tilting towards one or the other. In copyright law, such balance is reflected by the way in which the short-term grant of exclusive rights respects the long-term public interest represented by limitations and exceptions to copyright. Despite an unclear and non-uniform definition and scope, the importance of the public interest has been implicitly and explicitly recognised through disparate forms of safeguards in different jurisdictions. However, the last few decades have seen a rapid development of information technologies which, in turn, has contributed to an unparalleled legislative drive at international level towards overprotecting the interests of rightsholders. This has then left the public interest under-protected and now constitutes an imbalance of copyright. This thesis therefore examines legislative intervention into the international copyright regime in an attempt to ensure that the public interest is uniformly and mandatorily safeguarded at international level. In particular, it strives to establish an overarching public interest defence capable of protecting certain aspects of public values embedded in copyright works. In achieving this, the thesis examines the scope of the defence, what it should entail, and what aspects are to be taken into account in the course of formulating and giving effect to the defence. The substantive chapters investigate the public policy grounds, the right to freedom of expression and the international three-step test, i.e. the roles they play in shaping the latitude and operations of the defence, respectively. Finally, the thesis also evaluates different ways in which the defence can be incorporated into the international copyright regime in order to effectively counterbalance the rightsholder-centric tendency and restore the balance of copyright.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:748402 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Lekhawatthanapong, Thattaporn |
| Publisher | University of Nottingham |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/50736/ |
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