Internet Copyright

2.2.1 The diversities and harmonization of international copyright law

In order to design a comprehensive copyright authorization scheme in respect of software robots, the most important and fundamental work is studying what are the essential components of the copyright in the internet context, especially with regard to

the software robots accessing. In the context of internet, the accesses of software robots is boundless, that is to say, most of the accesses may cross the national boarders. From this standpoint, the authorization of copyright inevitably involves copyright legislations of more than one country. Therefore, the “copyright law” we have to study here is not limited in national legislations of any specific country, rather, is the international copyright laws.

The first critical fact that we have to notice is that copyright legislations in different nations are different, as many other fields of laws. The basic ideas, philosophy and principles of the same term “copyright” are quite different in different countries. In terms of the basic ideas behind the copyright, the worldwide copyright legislations can be generally classified into two separate systems: the author’s right and copyright right systems. The civil law countries, such as France and Germen, consider the author’s personality expressed in the work constitute the basic interest which should be respect and protect. On the other side, the common law countries, such as the UK, focus on the economic exploitation interest in the work, rather than the personality of author. Based on these separate basic ideas of copyright, there are several diversities between them which are important in the context of internet. For example, a work must be “original” is the same basic requirement in these two systems, however, the criteria of “original” is different, at least in theory. In author’s right countries, in respect the personality, a copyrighted work should represent the creation or intelligence of the author. In copyright countries, however, the traditional standard of

“originality” is only sufficient “investment of money, time, and labor”, regardless of creation or intelligence (Sterling, J.A.L., 2003c).

With the increasing advert of interchange of the world, especially with the rapid growth of internet, the diversity in international copyright legislation is gradually deemed as some kinds of hurdles which may become an impede of the information society. As a result, many international treaties, such as Berne Convention, WIPO Copyright Treaty, WIPO Performance and Phonograms Treaty, appear to harmonize and reduce the differences of copyright legislations between different countries. The basic infrastructure constructed by those international treaties provides us a well basic

scheme which we can use to analyze and discuss the substantial contents of copyright in relation to the software robots’ access and authorization.

2.2.2 The rights within the term “copyrights”

As the “copyright” is not a single right; instead, it can be seen as a set of rights which, according to author, can be generally classified under the headings of “moral right” and “economic right” (Sterling, 2003d). In general, the moral rights are those which relate to the protection for the personality of the author as expressed in their creations (Cornish and etc., 2003b). Economic rights, on the other hand, are those concerning control over the commercial or industrial exploitation of works, and other means of use of the works which involve such acts as reproduction or representation, but do not of themselves necessarily involve prejudice to the reputation of the author or the integrity of the work (Sterling, 2003d). In the internet environment, the main rights which may be infringed are: moral rights and related economic rights, including rights concerned with reproduction and adaptation and rights concerned with communication to the public (Sterling, 2003e).

We have to notice that not only the economic right taking an important part in the copyright infringement on the internet, with the appearance of information aggregation service, but the moral rights gradually play more significant roles. The most recent noticeable-worthy case is a Belgium case: Copiepresse v Google (Copispresse, 2007). In this case, the plaintiff Copiepresse is the representation of some Belgium French newspapers, who assert that one of the services provide by Google, the Google news, infringes the copyright of the Belgium newspapers. The software robots of Google news, retrieved the titles of those papers and, revised the titles and published them on the website of Google news, without the writers’

consents. Based on this fact, instead of alleging the infringement of economic rights, the plaintiff claimed that the paternity right and integrity right are be infringed as well.

The court of the first instance agreed the allegation about moral rights and, however, this case is still in appeal (Copiepresse, 2009).

To sum up, while the copyright legislation in different countries quite diverse;

however, in light of the international or regional conventions and treaties, we still can draw a basic scope of the economic and moral rights, which can be seen as the essentials of the copyright. Firstly, in respect of the adaptation/modification right and reproduction right arise little controversy, even in concern with the “transient copying”. On the other hand, the legal meanings of distribution right are different in the US and other countries. However, we can generally use the term

“distribution/communication right”, which combing the “communication rights”

defined in the WIPO treaties and the “distribution right” in the US, to represent the right of authors to control the dissemination of the works on the internet. Secondly, with regard to the moral rights, the paternity right and the integrity right are two commonly recognized moral rights and the other three moral right, the divulgation, the retraction right and the deconstruction right, are only partly recognized. However, according to the inalienability of the moral rights, the authorization scheme is not necessary to the moral rights.