Return to search

Broadcasters' Rights: Competing Rationales in the Global Digital Age

This thesis clarifies the rationale for the protection of the rights of broadcasting organisations and attempts to provide a theoretical basis for reforming the current regime. This research explores the formation and contents of legislation for protecting the rights of broadcasting organisations and analyses the current issues by means of a comparative study of Australian and Japanese law. The thesis starts with an introduction setting out the parameters of the argument, examination of previous research in relation to the topic, explanation of two approaches to the protection of broadcasters’ rights, the hypothesis, the scope, the material covered and the structure of the thesis. It then provides a detailed explanation of the key concepts (broadcasting, broadcasting organisation and the rights of broadcasting organisations). The research analyses the legal context in which those concepts operate in order to establish the scope of the legal inquiry into the rights of broadcasting organisations. The thesis then examines the international conventions and transnational legislation regarding protection of the rights of broadcasting organisations in order to provide a complete picture of the current situation at the international level. Following analysis of the present situation, the thesis examines the new communication technologies and critically reviews the ongoing discussions for the reform of the current international protection of the rights of broadcasting organisations by the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights in the World Intellectual Property Organisation. The thesis argues that the problems that broadcasting organisations are currently facing stem from the unsatisfactory understanding of the rationale for the protection of broadcasters’ rights. The thesis further argues from the analysis of the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) as representative of the common law or copyright approach that the rationale for the protection of broadcasters’ rights are in transition. This view is further advanced by the findings obtained as a result of analysis of the Japanese Copyright Law as representative of the civil law approach. The research reveals that the rationale for protection under Japanese law has long been misconceived. The research concludes that the current difficulties in considering the effective reform of the protection of the rights of broadcasting organisations both at the international and national level arose out of the lack of understanding of the rationale for protection.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/253919
CreatorsMs Megumi Ogawa
Source SetsAustraliasian Digital Theses Program
Detected LanguageEnglish

Page generated in 0.0015 seconds