International Copyright Law

There is no such thing as international copyright protection. There is not a universal law that will give an individual protection of their intellectual property throughout the entire world. Nonetheless, the importance of this issue is mounting. As the world capitalizes on ever increasing globalization, the borders of countries are disappearing. The author Thomas Friedman would say the competitors of today’s world are left with a flat playing field as a result of globalization. Although the field the world is competing on may be called flat, there still lacks a uniform code of laws that regulates how the game is played in regards to protecting intellectual property.

As the United States continues to explore international copy right laws, it is pertinent for one to understand the copyright rules that its citizens must abide by within their own walls. With a solid understanding of the copyright laws that reside in the United States, one can then fully synthesize the implications of the latest explorations of international law and what this means for those within the media field.

Although it might not be of primary concern of media law to mass communicators, copyrights are important and often involve those in this specific line of work. Mass communicators are concerned with copyrights that “protect creative works such as books, periodicals, manuscripts, music, film and video productions, computer software and works of art” (Overbeck, 227). With this in mind, it is essential to understand why such property law exists. Original lawmakers of copyright laws were interested in encouraging creativity. The biggest driving agent of creativity is the opportunity to profit from the creation of one’s works. They therefore wanted to make sure that a person’s right to make this profit was protected. With this protection, however, comes some controversy. In the past, intellectual property laws have been called monopolistic in that it creates monopolistic controls on knowledge. Those that oppose these types of laws argue that it is an abridgement of free expression.

Along with this opposition of intellectual property laws comes a long history in the United States. In the very early years of the United States history, Congress passed the Copyright Act of 1790. This law has been revised several times with the most major current revisions resulting in the Copyright Act of 1976. In short, these laws hold that “the owner of a copyright has the exclusive right to reproduce the copyrighted work, to create derivative works based on it, and to distribute copies, perform the work or display it to the public. Anyone else who does these things without the copyright owner’s permission is guilty of copyright infringement unless what that person does qualifies as a fair use” (Overbeck, 229). In addition, these laws outline what a copyright owner must do in order to qualify for a remedy of the situation.

As previously mentioned, the kinds of work that the Copyright Act includes is of importance to media law. As a general rule, any kind of creative endeavor may be copyrighted. This extends to literary works, musical works, dramatic works, choreographic works and pantomimes, pictorial, graphic and sculptural works, computer software, maps, architectural designs, recordings, motion pictures and radio or television productions. In other words, just about anything that is printed or broadcasted can be copyrighted. One great exception to this, however, is that news itself cannot be copyrighted (Overbeck, 229).

Securing a copyright in the United States is actually quite simple. The process of acquiring a copyright is limited to just filling out forms and paying the required fees. Once this is completed, it is custom to announce to everybody that your work is copyrighted. This is usually done by inserting the copyright symbol, Ð"", on the work. If a copyright is properly registered, there are several remedies available for infringements upon the copyright laws. These remedies include: “the right to seek an injunction (a court order to stop the infringement), a court order to impound all pirated copies, court-ordered payment of the copyright owner’s attorney’s fees by the infringer, and either actual or statutory damages” (Overbeck, 232).

In order for one of these remedies to be issued by a court, one must prove that there was infringement upon a copyrighted work. One of these things that a person must prove “is that the alleged infringer has some access to your work”; the other thing that one must prove is “that there is substantial similarity between the two works” in addition to providing proof that the copyright is valid and covers the work in question. (Overbeck, 233). Fogerty V. MGM Holdings Corporation, Inc is a case that was heard by the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in August of 2004 that deals with this issue of proving infringement. In summary, Fogerty argued in this case that the defendant violated the rights of works that were copyrighted in his name. He contended that a song created and supported by MGM was so similar to a song in which he held the rights for that copying is the only plausible explanation of the similarities. According to an opinion supplied by the circuit judge that presided over this case, “there is no evidence adduced by the Plaintiffs to support the proposition that the two works are so strikingly similar that copying is the only plausible explanation of the similarities” (Forgerty v. MGM).

The duration of copyrights is something that has also been the cause of a number of court cases. When congress enacted the original Copyright Act, they noted that a copyright is only valid for 14 years. This time period, however, has continuously been extended since the original law was enacted. In the 1976 revisions, the length of a basic copyright was extended to be the author’s life plus 50 years; and then in 1998 under the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act an additional 20 years was added to the duration of a typical copyright. Under this new act, the provisions called for the lifetime of a copyright to be that of the author’s life plus 70 years (Overbeck, 236).

It was this addition that cause arguments as to the constitutionality of the new stipulations. In Eldred et al. v. Ashcroft, attorney general, the plaintiffs argued that the repeated extension of copyright terms by Congress violated the limited times provision of the Constitution by creating perpetual copyrights. The supreme court justices, however, disagreed. In a 7 - 2 vote, the court confirmed that “extending copyrights by another 20 years, so that many last 95 years or longer did not