The primary argument and area of interest within this explorative study lies within the
domain of copyright law enforcement of the creative industries and argues the
deleterious impact that the infringement of copyright has on national and individual
balance sheets and the opportunity to re-engineer the copyright dividend.
Globally, creative industries are estimated to account for more than 7% of the world’s
gross domestic product and are predicted to grow, on average, 10% per year.
Digitization and the internet have seen to it that copyright, through inter alia the unlimted
reproduction capacity of copyrights, brought by digitization and the internet, has seen its
importance in the intellectual property bouquet soar. This study endevours to establish
the beginning of a discourse on copyright in which the very survival of the creative
industries, galvanized, for more than a century by technology and changes in
technology and the security of its consumers, depends on the adopting of improved, farsighted,
equitable, inclusive and stricter measures in order to protect such from both
internal and external threats. From a global perspective most copyright owners and
nations with few exceptions rich in copyrights, compounded by the presence of
unsubstantial collaboration, suffer losses because the protection of their respective
intellectual property rights such as copyright, trademarks and patents are not
adequately aligned with what may be referred as the technology conversation.
It is imperative that the collaborative copyright alliances develop a strategic agenda that
is relevant to the technology conversation in order to
re-engineer the copyright dividend
where new copyright enforcement mechanisms will be deployed. In as much as this
study placed greater emphasis on online infringement, physical piracy is still pervasive
and it intensely contributed to the explorative conversation. Piracy effectively relieves
copyright authors and the State of the royalty flows that arise from legal and transparent
use of copyright. It is these royalty flows that give rise to term “copyright dividend”
literally meaning the income arising from the underlying copyright assets. Seeing what
is stolen by piracy as the “theft”, whether direct or indirect, of copyright dividends, the
challenge to address, avert and amend such outcomes is akin to re-engineering the
copyright dividend and this meant the examining of the copyright law structures
influencing and regulating the trade in copyrights. In this study the focus was initially on
understanding the copyright law regimes and the real challenges that influenced their
respective implementations that generated a copyright dividend. Understanding exactly
how well such were actually working rested on exploring the lived experiences and
perceptions of ten copyright experts across the world from two primary copyright law
regimes. Such an exploration was necessary as such provided the requisite insight into
inter alia the legal framework wherein both the illegal market and the legal market for
copyright operated, to the threats faced the copyright dividend.
Five research questions were used in this study. Such served as the discussion points
used in the interviews with the ten research participants.These five research questions
emerged from the problematization within current , literature and supported by the
research data. The obtained data were grouped in relation to the five research
questions and filtered to identify commonalities amongst the ten participants. The
obtained data were grouped in relation to the five research questions and filtered
through a lamination process,which emerged to identify commonalities amongst the ten
participants.The global copyright law system and stakeholdership presently lack the
necessary strategies, capacities, will and common thought to effectively address
infringement. This is the major impediment of technological advancement and thus reengineering
the copyright dividend was critical. To a demonstratable extend it is
independent of the progress of governments and other relevant parties affected by
infringement. The data also showed that infringement is an eroding threat to intellectual
property and that critical knowledge is an urgent necessity to re-install the copyright
value in its global ecosystem, which is essentially achieved by diverting the copyright
dividends stolen by the illegal copyright market and re-engineering the copyright
dividend. The outcome is that copyright law enforcement promotes the returns of
dividends and fair trade to the rightful owners in an accountable and sustainable
manner, as was and is intended by the global copyright law regimes. / PhD (Business Administration), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NWUBOLOKA1/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/15377 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Luthuli, Lesley Thulani |
| Source Sets | North-West University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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