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sa Ethics and cyber low

 Outline
Copyright in the information society
 Introduction
 The internet
 Multimedia
 Legal liability of internet service providers
 Electronic rights management information

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 Copyright in the information society

❑ Introduction

All manner of works can be stored and made available electronically. Literature, music, works of
art, audio-visual works and industrial designs can all be represented in digital form. Three-dimensional works and moving
images can be expressed digitally and, using appropriate software, displayed on screens, copied, manipulated or transmitted
anywhere in the world ‘at the
touch of a button’.
The ease with which all forms of creative expression can be exploited digitally has far-reaching consequences as regards the
dissemination of information and opened up the exciting

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 Copyright in the information society

❑ The internet

Internet publishing looks very attractive at first sight. It is a really effective way of making a work
available to a wide audience at minimal expense. Many academic writers were quick to seize the opportunity to spread their work on a
worldwide scale. Numerous academic journals are now available online.
Countless other works are available freely such as online encyclopedias (such as Wikipedia), online health information (such as NHS
Direct) and online language translation services (such as Babel) to name but a few. Many works available online contain marketing
material or are provided as part of an information service.
Whilst many authors and copyright owners may be happy to distribute their work in this way, without direct recompense, they might
complain if the works are further used.
An example may
be where a rival company lifts material from a commercial website to re-publish on its own website, passing it off as its own material.
In other cases, authors and their publishers depend on the income they receive from publishing. The view that the internet is
equivalent to the public
domain and anything available there can be freely copied and distributed is misguided.

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 Copyright in the information society

❑ The internet

Simply put, the internet is made up of public telecommunications

systems which are used to
carry information from host computers to recipients.
The technology makes use of the most effective path through the
system at the time of transmission, breaking down the materials
transmitted into small packets and routing the packets to avoid busy
lines.
Different packets of information sent from one server to one recipient
may take different routes through the telecommunications networks, to
be re-assembled when received.
No one is in overall control of the internet.
Individual works available on the internet will normally have their own
copyright which may well be a foreign copyright. In most cases, the
copyright country and the recipient country will be Contracting Parties
to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic
Works.
In these cases, the recipient country will extend its copyright protection
to the work in question.

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 Copyright in the information society

❑ Multimedia

A CD or DVD typically may contain a whole range of works. For example, a multimedia product on the topic of romantic poems may
include among other things:
■ the text of poems to be displayed on screen;
■ the sound of poems being recited;
■ a commentary comprising an oral and/or textual description of material relating to the poets
and their poems;
■ film sequences showing the poets at work or relaxing;
■ photographs of the poets’ birthplaces, homes, relatives and acquaintances; and
■ introductory and background music feature of multimedia is that the person using the product can move about it at will.
The information is, therefore, structured and may have hypertext links. In terms of copyright subsistence, all the works above may
be subject to copyright in addition to the whole as a compilation or database.
On balance, it seems most likely that such DVD and CD products will be classified as databases, except in the case of music
compilations which are excluded by the Directive on the legal
protection of databases:4 these continue to be protected as compilations. If a DVD or CD like that made by MultiMega is a
database, the next question is whether it is a copyright database or whether it is only subject to the database right.

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 Copyright in the information society

❑ Legal liability of internet service providers

Internet service providers (ISPs) enable and facilitate access to material on the internet as well as
providing a range of other services including e-mail services, bulleting boards, chat-rooms and hosting websites.
Some organizations provide a full range of services whilst others may specialize, for example, in relation to website hosting.
All these activities have serious copyright implications and this part of the chapter considers the liability of ISPs generally for infringement of
copyright and related rights.
Through their agreements with persons to whom they provide services, ISPs have some
measure of control, for example, by requiring their subscribers to adhere to copyright law and
not to make infringing material available to others, whether on a bulletin board, website, transmission by e-mail or otherwise. ISPs may even
seek indemnities from their subscribers for copyright infringement attributable to their actions.
ISPs are not liable for temporary reproduction where it is in accordance with the permitted
ISPs equipment. It would seem to allow straightforward transmission as well as temporary storage such as by caching data during web
browsing. A cache is a temporary storage area where frequently accessed data is stored. For example, when browsing a website, data already
accessed
(such as the front page) will be stored temporarily so that it can be retrieved again quickly rather
than being loaded up again from the website.
Apart from the permitted act of temporary reproduction and special defenses for ISPs in
relation to illegal material, discussed later, ISPs may be vulnerable for copyright infringement in
a number of ways:
■ by being secondary infringers;
■ by authorizing infringement; or
■ by joint infringement

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 Copyright in the information society

❑ Electronic rights management information

Where a work is made available electronically, particularly online, the copyright owner may well have included a copyright notice which, apart
from the usual familiar notice, © together with the owner’s name and year of publication, may include other information, typically, limiting what
can be done with the work.
If that information is removed, in whole or in part, anyone accessing the work subsequently may think that they are allowed to carry out other
acts. They may think that they can make it freely available for others.
Apart from these and similar dangers, there may be other issues such as where the name of the author has been removed, compromising his
.moral rights.
The Directive on copyright in the information society attempted to protect such information, known as rights management information, where
works were made available in electronic form.
The relevant provisions are contained in section 296ZG of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
It defines rights management information as:
. . . any information provided by the copyright owner or the holder of any right under copyright
which identifies the work, the author, the copyright owner or the holder of any intellectual property rights, or information about the terms and
conditions of use of the work, and any numbers or codes that
represent such information.
A person who knowingly and without authority removes or alters electronic rights management information knowing or having reason to believe
that by doing so he is enabling, facilitating or
concealing an infringement of copyright is liable as if that person had infringed the copyright subsisting in the work.
That liability is owed to the person issuing copies to the public or communicating the work to the public or the copyright owner or his exclusive
licensee, all of whom have concurrent rights.

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SUMMARY
■ Making music files available for copying with peer-to-peer file sharing software infringes copyright by: – communicating the musical
works to the public; and – authorizing infringement of copyright. 118 Electronic rights management information INIT_C07.QXP 20/6/07
14:05 Page 118 Copyright in the information society Self-test questions 119 7
■ Placing a copyright work on a website falls within the restricted act of communicating the work to the public.
■ Temporary reproduction of a copyright work is allowed under certain circumstances: – by ISPs in transmitting a work from one third
party to another; and – where the use of the work is otherwise lawful.
■ The architecture of a website may be protected as a non-literal element.
■ Domain names are unlikely to be works of copyright.
■ Many rights may exist in a multimedia product.
■ ISPs have potential liability for infringement but: – they have some special defenses; although – injunctions may be granted against
them in respect of infringing material.
■ Legal protection is given to: copy-protection devices applied to computer programs; and – technical measures applied to other works
which prevent or – restrict unauthorized acts.
■ Rights management information applied to works in electronic form is protected.