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Copyright - What is that ? |
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Copyright is the means by which a person or a business makes a living from creativity. Copyright springs from a simple notion: the people that create, produce or invest in creative work should be the ones that decide how that work should be reproduced and made available to the public.
The Copyright law protects everyone involved in the music industry - from the aspiring artist to the successful bestseller, and from the local independent record company to the large multinational producer. It ensures that all the parties that have had a part in creating the music are rewarded for their work.
The Copyright law protects the true value behind the sale of any musical recording - these rights represent and reward the creativity, sweat and toil of those who create and sell music. The proportion of the price of a CD or cassette accounted for by the cost of manufacturing the product is minimal. The real value is in the creativity that is protected by Copyright law.
The recording industry is driven by dynamism and enterprise, but these would be meaningless without adequate legal protection of copyright. Record companies invest billions of dollars of the industry’s total worldwide revenues in new artists, many of whom will never prove commercially successful. It is this culturally diverse bedrock of investment in new talent that Copyright law protects.
It is theft of rights in copyright, including the rights to reproduce or copy, to publish, to publicly perform, to translate, to communicate by electronic transmission for example on the Internet, to broadcast, to rent out and to authorize any of these rights.
The Copyright Act states that:
"It is an infringement of copyright for any person to do, without the consent of the owner of the copyright, anything that by this Act only the owner of the copyright has the right to do."
"Infringing means in relation to a sound recording in respect of which copyright subsists, any copy of it made or dealt with in contravention of this Act...".
For example file sharing on a P2P service such as KAZAA is an infringement and illegal because it is a transmission of a copy of a sound recording that was made by an individual for a use other than a private use.
Legal remedies for infringement of copyright are available to the copyright owner in both the Civil Courts and in the Criminal courts.
Criminal penalties are fines to a maximum of $25,000 per count and/or up to 6 months imprisonment or both for summary convictions and for a conviction on indictment (more serious infringement) fines up to a maximum of $1 million per count and/or up to 5 years imprisonment.
Equipment and material that is used to infringe can be confiscated and forfeited on conviction.
Offenders can be ordered by the court to make restitution for losses suffered by owner of the copyright.
Offenders can also be sued by the copyright owner in civil court for damages including statutory damages (a preset range that doesn’t require proof of loss), punitive damages, payment of court costs and pre and post judgment interest.