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Encyclopedia > Copyright infringements

Copyright infringement is the unauthorized use of copyrighted material in a manner that violates one of the copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works that build upon it. The slang term bootleg (derived from the use of the shank of a boot for the purposes of smuggling) is often used to describe illicitly copied material. Copyright symbol. ... In law, an exclusive right is the power or right to perform an action in relation to an object or other thing which others cannnot perform. ... A pair of classic black leather Dr. Martens. ... A skirmish with smugglers from Finland at the Russian border, 1853, by Vasily Hudiakov. ...


In many jurisdictions, such as the United States, copyright infringement is a strict liability tort or crime. This means that the plaintiff or prosecutor must only prove that the act of copying or actus reus was committed by the defendant, and need not prove mens rea. Good faith, standing alone, is no defense. Strict liability is a legal doctrine in tort law that makes a person responsible for the damages caused by their actions regardless of culpability (fault) or mens rea. ... In the common law, a tort is a civil wrong, other than a breach of contract, for which the law provides a remedy. ... A plaintiff, also known as a claimant or complainant, is the party who initiates a lawsuit (also known as an action) before a court. ... The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ... Actus reus is the action (or inaction, in the case of criminal negligence and similar crimes which are sometimes called acts of omission) which, in combination with the mens rea (guilty mind), produces criminal liability in common law based criminal law jurisdictions such as the United States, United Kingdom. ... A defendant or defender is any party who is required to answer the complaint of a plaintiff or pursuer in a civil lawsuit before a court, or any party who has been formally charged or accused of violating a criminal statute. ... The mens rea is the Latin term for guilty mind used in the criminal law. ... Good faith, or in Latin bona fides, is the mental and moral state of honesty, conviction as to the truth or falsehood of a proposition or body of opinion, or as to the rectitude or depravity of a line of conduct, even if the conviction is objectively unfounded. ...


For electronic and audio-visual media, unauthorized reproduction and distribution is often referred to as piracy or theft (an early reference was made by Alfred Tennyson in the preface to his poem "The Lover's Tale" in 1879 where he mentions that sections of this work "have of late been mercilessly pirated".) The legal basis for this usage dates from the same era, and has been consistently applied until the present time.[1] Critics of the use of "software piracy" to describe such practices contend that it unfairly compares a crime that makes no victim - except for those that would have profited from hypothetically lost sales - with the violent actions of organized thieves and murderers; it also confuses mere illegal copying of material with the intentional and malicious penetration of computer systems to which one does not legally have access. As a consequence, "software piracy" is a somewhat loaded term. "Theft" or "stealing" are considered even more inflammatory, as well as legally misleading.[2] A thief is someone or something that performs theft, a crime against property. ...

Contents


Methods of copyright infringement

There are numerous ways to deter people from committing piracy. Here is an image which intends to deter people from recording films inside a cinema.
Enlarge
There are numerous ways to deter people from committing piracy. Here is an image which intends to deter people from recording films inside a cinema.

The unlawful downloading and sharing of recorded music in the form of MP3 and other small, lossy audio files is still widespread, even after the demise of Napster and a series of infringement suits brought by the American recording industry against music-sharing individuals seemingly chosen at random. Promotional screener DVDs distributed by movie studios (often for consideration for awards) are a common source of unauthorised copying when movies are still in theatrical release, and the MPAA has attempted to restrict their use. Movies are also still copied by someone sneaking a camcorder into a movie theater and secretly taping the projection (also known as "CAM"), although such copies are often of lesser quality than officially released version of the film. Sharing copied music is legal in many countries, such as Canada, and parts of Europe, provided that this information is neither advertised, nor that the songs be sold. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (984x583, 101 KB) Licensing This work is a copyrighted publicity photograph of a person, product, or event that is known to have come from a press kit or similar source, for the purpose of reuse by the media. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (984x583, 101 KB) Licensing This work is a copyrighted publicity photograph of a person, product, or event that is known to have come from a press kit or similar source, for the purpose of reuse by the media. ... File sharing is the activity of making files available to other users for download over the Internet, but also over smaller networks. ... MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a popular digital audio encoding and lossy compression format invented and standardized in 1991 by a team of engineers directed by the Fraunhofer Society in Erlangen, Germany. ... A lossy data compression method is one where compressing data and then decompressing it retrieves data that may well be different from the original, but is close enough to be useful in some way. ... Second version (revised 2001) of Napster logo: Cat wearing headphones. ... The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a special interest group representing the U.S. recording industry, and the body responsible for certifying gold and platinum albums and singles in the USA. For more information about sales data see list of best selling albums and list of best selling... A screener is an advance video or DVD copy of a film sent to critics, awards voters, and other movie industry professionals, including producers and distributors. ... The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is a non-profit trade association formed to advance the interests of movie studios. ... Before the camcorder. ... cam (also CAM) is a specific type or method of motion picture piracy. ...


Bootleg recordings are musical recordings that have not been officially released by the artist or their associated management or production companies. They may consist of demos, outtakes or other studio material, or of illicit recordings of live performances. Music enthusiasts may use the term "bootleg" to differentiate these otherwise unavailable recordings from "pirated" copies of commercially released material, but these recordings are still protected by copyright despite their lack of formal release, and their distribution is still against the law. A bootleg recording is a audio or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. ...


Penalties

Though many jurisdictions impose criminal penalties for certain blatant acts of copyright infringement and may try to stop certain infringing imports at the border, copyright infringement is still mainly prosecuted through private lawsuits by the copyright holder or their exclusive licensees. When successful, these lawsuits will typically impose monetary damages against the infringer as well as injunctions against future infringing uses. A lawsuit is a civil action brought before a court in which the party commencing the action, the plaintiff, seeks a legal remedy. ... An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a court order that either prohibits or compels (restrains or enjoins) a party from continuing a particular activity. ...


Many infringement claims involve simple cases of copyright infringement where the copying is obvious. Others, however, are more difficult to resolve because copyright protection is not limited to exact copying. It is inevitable that creative and commercial works will take inspiration from the culture at large, and it is often challenging to determine when this "inspiration" has crossed the line into infringement, especially in the case of musical works. There also may be a question of whether the allegedly infringed work is even protected by copyright. Unprotected works may include, for example, compilations of facts that lack the requisite creativity to be covered by copyright, or those works that are in the public domain because the copyright term expired. The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...


Copyright notices—often just a simple statement on the work itself of the year protection was acquired and by whom—are not always a good indication of whether a work is protected because most countries do not require such formalities, and so lack of notice does not mean lack of protection. Courts may also subsequently decide in the context of an infringement suit that the work did not meet the minimum criteria for copyright protection, even if the work had been previously registered by a government or private copyright agency. However, copyright notices give at least some indication of whom to contact if permission is needed, and when a copyright will expire, though the copyright terms of preexisting works are sometimes legislatively extended (as with the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act) or even restored after expiration (as with the Directive on harmonising the term of copyright protection in the European Union). The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 extended copyright terms in the United States by 20 years. ... The Directive on harmonizing the term of copyright protection was a European Union (EU) copyright directive issued in 1993. ...


To avoid infringement claims, the right to make use of a copyrighted work can be acquired through an explicit contract or license with the author or publisher, through purchasing a lawful copy (which may provide a number of rights to the purchaser, as under the first-sale doctrine), and for certain types of media, statutory licenses (such as for reproducing and recording musical works under U.S. copyright law). Even without going through such channels to get prior authorization for use of the copyrighted material, doctrines such as fair use or fair dealing may provide potentially broad defenses to infringement claims. The failure of a copyright holder to bring a timely lawsuit against known infringers may later block such a claim by establishing an implied license, as may other acts or omissions that could informally signal consent to use the work. first-sale doctrine applicable to patents The first-sale doctrine is an exception to copyright codified in the US Copyright Act, section 109. ... A statutory license or compulsory license is a copyright license to use content under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. ... The fair use doctrine is an aspect of United States copyright law that provides for the legal, non-licensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another authors work under a four-factor balancing test. ... Fair dealing is a doctrine of limitations and exceptions to copyright which is found in many of the common law jurisdictions of the Commonwealth of Nations. ...


Copyright misuse, the exploitive or restrictive use of a copyright by its legal holder, is sometimes informally called reverse piracy. Copyright misuse is an equitable defense against copyright infringement in the United States based on the unreasonable conduct of the copyright owner. ...


See also

For a substantial discussion of copyright infringement in the domain of computer programs, see copyright infringement of software. The copyright infringement of software refers to several practices when done without the permission of the copyright holder: Creating a copy and selling it. ...

For the policy on copyright in Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Copyrights. Copyright symbol. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... A bootleg recording is a audio or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. ... A peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network is a network that relies on the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network rather than concentrating it in a relatively few servers. ... The International Federation of Phonogram and Videogram Producers (IFPI) is an international record industry organization based in Zurich, Switzerland. ... The original logo. ... A street vendor packing up his display of counterfeit CDs after being photographed. ... Plagiarism is a form of academic dishonesty, specifically the unacknowledged use of another persons idea(s), information, language, or writing. ... A counterfeit is an imitation that is made with the intent to deceptively represent its content or origins. ... The French law on authors rights and related rights in the information society (loi sur le droit dauteur et les droits voisins dans la société de linformation, generally abbreviated as DADVSI) is a bill reforming French copyright law in order to implement the 2001 European directive... The European Union (EU) directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society, commonly known as the EU Copyright Directive or short EUCD, is the EUs implementation...


Notes

  1.   See Berne Copyright Convention, 1886: "Pirated works may be seized on importation into those countries of the Union where the original work enjoys legal protection." (Art. 12).
  1.   In Dowling v. United States (1985), the U.S. Supreme Court held that copyright infringement does not "easily equate" to theft and unauthorized copies are not stolen property.

Dowling v. ... The Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C., (large image) The Supreme Court of the United States, located in Washington, D.C., is the highest court (see supreme court) in the United States; that is, it has ultimate judicial authority within the United States...

External links


  Results from FactBites:
 
NII - Part I: Law - Copyright Infringement (3872 words)
Copyright infringement is determined without regard to the intent or the state of mind of the infringer; "innocent" infringement is infringement nonetheless.
Courts have found contributory infringement liability, for instance, when a defendant chose the infringing material to be used in the direct infringer's work,[45] and vicarious liability when a defendant was responsible for the day-to-day activities where the infringement took place.
Copyright would lose much of its value if third parties such as publishers and producers were insulated from liability because of their innocence as to the culpability of the persons who supplied them with the infringing material.
U.S. Copyright Office - 128-Bit Browsers (4719 words)
(b) The legal or beneficial owner of an exclusive right under a copyright is entitled, subject to the requirements of section 411, to institute an action for any infringement of that particular right committed while he or she is the owner of it.
- The copyright owner is entitled to recover the actual damages suffered by him or her as a result of the infringement, and any profits of the infringer that are attributable to the infringement and are not taken into account in computing the actual damages.
In establishing the infringer's profits, the copyright owner is required to present proof only of the infringer's gross revenue, and the infringer is required to prove his or her deductible expenses and the elements of profit attributable to factors other than the copyrighted work.
  More results at FactBites »


 
 

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