International copyright Part 9

Choice of Law in International copyright : The Split of Authority Between the Second and Ninth Circuits Regarding Extraterritorial Application of the Copyright Act
Robert H. Thornburg
Journal of Technology Law & Policy
Volume 10, Issue 1, June 2005

Intellectual Property Politics and the Private International Law of Copyright Ownership
Graeme W. Austin
Brooklyn Journal of International Law
Volume 30, Number 3, 2005 p.899

“Hail to the Thief: A Tribute to Kazaa”
Matthew Rimmer
University of Ottawa Law and Technology Journal
Volume 2, Issue 1, 2005 p.173

This paper considers the ongoing litigation against the peer-to-peer network KaZaA. Record companies and Hollywood studios have faced jurisdictional and legal problems in suing this network for copyright infringement. As Wired Magazine observes: “The servers are in Denmark. The software is in Estonia. The domain is registered Down Under, the corporation on a tiny island in the South Pacific. The users – 60 million of them – are everywhere around the world.”In frustration, copyright owners have launched copyright actions against intermediaries – like against Internet Service Providers such as Verizon. They have also embarked on filing suits against individual users of file-sharing programs. In addition, copyright owners have called for domestic- and international-law reform with respect to digital copyright. The Senate Committee on Government Affairs of the United States Congress has reviewed the controversial use of subpoenas in suits against users of file-sharing peer-to-peer networks. The United States has encouraged other countries to adopt provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998 in bilateral and regional free-trade agreements.

Canada Sup. Ct. June 30, 2004: Application of Copyright Act to international internet transmissions – Activities of internet service provider – Caching – 2004 SCC 45 – Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada v. Canadian Association of Internet Providers – “Music Publishers v. Internet Providers”
International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law
Volume 36, Number 5, 2005

National Treatment, National Interest and the Public Domain
Margaret Ann Wilkinson
University of Ottawa Law and Technology Journal
Volume 1, Issues 1 & 2, 2003-2004 p.23

The concept of the “public domain”is a powerful rhetorical element in the policy debates involving intellectual property. But is it a stable and useful concept for analyzing information issues? Can the notion of the public domain and the concept of the information commons be separated? Is the notion of the public domain merely another way of expressing the public interest?This paper canvassed the literature, seeking a theoretically consistent definition for public domain that was equally applicable across the copyright, trademark and patent spheres. The analysis demonstrated that there is no such construct. The paper also reviews the findings of those who have tried to empirically demonstrate the ambit of the public domain and illustrates that the problems of definition identified as part of the canvas of theoretical approaches also plague attempts to create a consistent empirical picture. However, these attempts themselves demonstrate, despite the long international commitment to intellectual property, how nationally jurisdictionally bound each description of the public domain is.Finally, although the public domain concept may be recognized as having value as an explanatory device, given its limited theoretical and descriptive value, one may question its role as rhetoric affecting policy development. Given the etymological roots of the concept of the public domain, in an agrarian-rooted property context, and given the multidimensional complexities of the current information society, the paper concludes that the notion of the public domain can lead to an oversimplification of the environment within which intellectual property devices operate.

Author: international

Mentioned in these Entries

International copyright, Private International Law.