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Many online media platforms currently utilise algorithmically driven content moderation to prevent copyright infringement. This article explores content moderation’s effect on mashup music – a form of remix which relies primarily on the unauthorised combining of pre-existing, recognisable recordings. Drawing on interviews ( n = 30) and an online survey ( n = 92) with mashup producers, we show that content moderation affects producers’ creative decisions and distribution strategies, and has a strong negative effect on their overall motivation to create mashups. The objections that producers hold to this state of affairs often strongly resonate with current copyright exceptions. However, we argue that these exceptions, which form a legal ‘grey zone’, are currently unsatisfactorily accommodated for by platforms. Platforms’ political-economic power allows them, in effect, to ‘occupy’ and control this zone. Consequently, the practical efficacy of copyright law’s exceptions in this setting is significantly reduced.

The use of social media may be contributing to violations of copyright law and can create legal challenges for school districts trying to balance ease of communication and First Amendment freedom of speech rights against compliance with federal regulations. In this case, a district is threatened with a lawsuit for copyright violation when one of the employees retweets a trademarked phrase. The case explores how school districts monitor copyright law, issues surrounding social media accounts for teachers and other employees such as coaches, the district’s liability for what is shared on those accounts, professional development, and possible board and district responses.

Library and information science (LIS) professionals often act as default copyright mavens at their institutions and, therefore, must have an awareness of copyright law and practices. Using a quantitative national survey: ‘Copyright Literacy of Bangladeshi LIS Professionals’ which was part of a multinational survey entitled ‘Copyright Literacy of specialists from libraries and other cultural institutions’, the main objective of the Bangladesh part was to illustrate the self-perceived familiarity with, knowledge and awareness of, and opinions about copyright-related issues of LIS professionals in Bangladesh. The survey also explored the existing institutional copyright policies, the need for copyright education for new and existing professionals and suggested topics for inclusion in training activities. The results show that Bangladeshi LIS professionals have conceptual knowledge and awareness of copyright issues, but overall lack an applied approach and hands-on training. This weakness is even more pronounced among LIS professionals who work in non-academic institutions. Based on these findings, it is suggested that relevant workshops, seminars and roundtable meetings focusing on copyright be organized that will pave the way for continued knowledge development around this topic.

Because music piracy from the internet imposes fines upon individuals, it is important to construct and test warnings in an effort to curb potentially illegal behavior. Each icon contained an eighth note to denote music, action symbol ( upload or download), a prohibition symbol ( slash or cross), and/or a computer for context. Four icons that initially met the ISO 67% comprehension rate were combined with various signal word and consequence messages, yielding 60 test stimuli. Results revealed that participants generally viewed the icon with a computer for context and download symbol with a prohibitive slash as opposed with a cross (“X”) symbol as more effective, than icons with an upload symbol. Signal words conveying the presence of a risk (i.e., IMPORTANT and STOP) received higher perceived effectiveness ratings than NOTICE. Increasing the number of consequences in the warning led to greater perceived warning effectiveness ratings. Hence, a possible warning for music piracy is suggested, with its implications discussed.

This study investigates copyright discourses on YouTube. Through a qualitative content analysis of 144 YouTube videos, we explore how YouTube creators understand copyright law, how they minimize risks posed by copyright infringement, and how they navigate a highly technical and dynamic copyright enforcement ecosystem. Our findings offer insights into how digitally situated cultural producers are impacted by and respond to automated content moderation. This is important because increasingly lawmakers around the world are asking digital platforms to implement efficient systems for content moderation, and yet there is a lack of good information about the stakeholders most directly impacted by these practices. In this study, we present a systematic analysis of copyright gossip, building on the concept of algorithmic gossip, which comprises the opinions, theories, and strategies of creators who are affected by YouTube’s copyright enforcement systems.

Following criticisms of British copyright law that it is influenced by Romantic ideals of authorship, I ask whether it makes sense to distinguish between music composers and performers in law. Drawing on interviews with classical and popular music performers and relevant case law, I examine how performers negotiate and exploit different rights in order to determine ownership. Evidence suggests that rather than a binary, musicians’ creative work can best be represented as moving along a continuum between composition and performance with both concepts socially much in use. Musicians position their work on this continuum according to three motifs: composer–performer discourses and careers, genre and power relationships. I argue that the legal categories of joint or individual authorship, adaptation and performance protect most contributions to a musical work and align with the social understandings of different types of contributions. Yet I also note that, viewed more normatively, a recasting of the rights could help shift those social understandings and alter the inequalities inherent in both musical practices and the law.

Reviews the role of copyright in digital academic and research library development in the UK over the last 25 years, drawing on policy documents, legislative reviews and statutes, project documentation and programme syntheses. Finds that copyright-related issues have presented challenges for the development of digital libraries. UK copyright law has been reformed as a result of consultative reviews, but the role of high-level negotiations between stakeholder representatives and the development of model and blanket licences have arguably been more effective in supporting the development of digital libraries. Despite tensions between libraries and publishers, gradual cultural change and the roles played key players such funding councils and high-level representative groups have facilitated progress. The increasing trend towards open licensing presents new roles for libraries as well as challenges and new business opportunities for publishers. Concludes it is unclear what future UK copyright and research policy will be, but it is likely that improved access to academic resources and research will continue, the roles of libraries and publishers will continue to evolve, and new sources of tension and challenges will arise.

From the standard economic rationale, music copyright supports the rights of authors and creators to exclude competitors and the public from accessing and copying their works to the extent necessary to provide incentive to recover the investment they made in creating those works. The necessary extent in music copyright is from the interplay of three historical drivers of copyright policy—technology (which makes things possible), the market (which gives rise to consumer demand and companies delivering goods and services to satisfy those consumers), and the law (which determines the rules of the road). Due to differences in cultural traditions and historical developments, these processes have been different for the United States and China. This “In Focus” report briefly explores intellectual property and music copyright in these two countries from an historical perspective, comments on their current state, and reflects on future directions.

This article traces the application, operation and development of copyright law regarding literary works in colonial Australia. It examines the reception of the Literary Copyright Act 1842 (UK) and the Foreign Reprints Act 1847 (UK), exploring early (unsuccessful) attempts to liberalize the Australian book trade by allowing foreign imports of UK-copyright works. It also analyzes the development of colonial copyright legislation from the 1860s, using parliamentary debates and media commentary to explore contemporary attitudes to copyright policy. These inquiries reveal that the Australian colonies were unique throughout the empire in their insistence on toeing the imperial copyright line, in ways that were frequently contrary to the interests of colonial authors and readers.

Many music educators do not sufficiently understand the complicated system of U.S. copyright law or what constitutes “fair use,” resulting in both illegal and overly conservative practices. Increasingly accessible recording and distribution technology has also led to common practices such as posting performances on YouTube, creating rehearsal tracks, and student arranging projects for performance. Though current laws are not designed to address these practices, musicians and copyright holders alike seem to have moved on without legislation. This article offers a brief summary of copyright law as it pertains to music teachers, including discussions of fair use and the public domain and some legal alternatives to copyright infringement.

Scientists around the world benefit from sharing scientific data, lab notes, and preliminary papers, as well as traditional, formal scientific papers. Institutional repositories (IR) are open spaces for scientists to deposit their work. Doing so could potentially spark new collaborations, allowing scientists and scholars to build cross-institutional capacity. However, scientists must trust that the repository is secure, and they must understand copyright law and protections. Many African nations are at a crossroads: poised to solve major problems with well-trained scientists, yet stymied by expensive and unpredictable ICT. Many African scientists are also wary of the Internet due to rampant scams and fraud. This paper describes current African ICT development, reports on findings from a study about ICT, databases, and IRs in Ghana, and concludes with recommendations for expanding the use of IRs.

This article explores the complex relationship of a particular community of remix artists, known as vidders, to copyright law. With streaming video capabilities and the widespread popularity of remix culture, the historically underground vidding community has been forced to adapt to new conditions. In response to much existing scholarship, which portrays remixers and fans as victims of an unjust system, this research draws on ethnographic research to reveal community-based strategies used by vidders to mitigate the risks as perceived infringers of copyright. It will discuss vidders’ understandings of copyright law in relation to their work, and also their efforts to legitimize fan practices and remix as legal uses of copyrighted material under US law. Rather than being seen as simply victims of an unjust system, this research demonstrates that online communities have worked proactively to understand and respond to perceived copyright threats.

This article discusses the development of web archiving in Singapore and its relationship to copyright law. The author describes legal deposit, its definition and historical development, the differences between voluntary and compulsory legal deposit, and the practices of such approaches within the National Library of Singapore. It highlights two main projects, the Singapore Memory Project and Web Archive Singapore (WAS). The paper analyses how the implementation of legal deposit for preserving web material creates a complex relationship between copyright and digital heritage, and describes difficulties that cover the information lifecycle of web archiving. Finally, the paper presents a set of conclusions and recommendations regarding the need for modifying copyright legislation to foster research activities within Singapore's knowledge economy.

Since the advent of the file-sharing program Napster in June of 1999, copyright infringement has plagued the recorded music industry. We review the evidence on piracy and its effect on record industry profits. We then model the behavior of file sharers and music producers under different remuneration and legal regimes using a stage game. We find that under certain conditions, the removal of copyright laws for recorded music is welfare improving. There is also a parameter space where public sector music distribution combined with a tax-payer funded subsidy of music production is welfare dominant.

One of the most important issues for world libraries at the present time is to extend copyright limitations and exceptions for reproduction, for library preservation and distribution services including lending and ILL/DDS, the printout and transmission of Internet information resources, copying of library materials which are rarely available through normal trade channel and government publications, and the reproduction and electronic transmission of materials for persons with disabilities. Korean copyright law restricts access to information for persons with disabilities and often overrides their fair use rights. For these reasons, this study analysed the copyright exceptions for persons with disabilities in six major countries (United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, and Republic of Korea) and suggested a re-draft of the Copyright Law of Korea to improve library services for persons with disabilities.

Social authorship ventures involving masses of volunteers like Wikipedia are thought to be a phenomenon enabled by digital technology, presenting new challenges for copyright law. By contrast, the case study explored in this article uncovers copyright issues considered in relation to a 19th-century social authorship precedent: the 70-year process of compiling the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (NED) instigated by the not-for-profit Philological Society in 1858, which involved thousands of casually organized volunteer readers and subeditors. Drawing on extensive original archival research, the article uses the case study as a means of critically reflecting on the claims of existing interdisciplinary literature concerning copyright and ‘authorship’; unlike the claims of the so-called Romanticism thesis, the article argues that copyright law supported an understanding of NED authorship as collaborative and democratic. Further, in uncovering the practical solutions, which lawyers considered in debating issues relating to title and rights clearance, the article uses the 19th-century experience as a vantage point for considering how these issues are approached today; despite the very different context, the copyright problems and solutions debated in the 19th century demonstrate remarkable continuity with those considered in relation to social authorship projects today.

The essay explores the interactive role of experts in the construction of the intangible object in copyright law. It pays special attention to the interventions and eventual connections of a British design consultant and fashion designer, Victor Herbert, in different copyright cases such as the well-known Designers Guild Ltd v. Russell Williams (Textiles) Ltd [2001]. The article traces the background of his early court appearances as an expert witness and the range of visual techniques and experiments he developed to “materialize” the incorporeal in copyright law.

The key element of Web 2.0 is what O’Reilly refers to as an ‘architecture of participation’. Taglines such as YouTube’s ‘broadcast yourself ’ and Lulu’s ‘publish your words, your art — for fun or profit’ point to the creative empowerment that has accompanied the mass adoption of digital technologies and the rise of Web 2.0 applications. Combined with the ‘rip, mix and burn’ nature of digital technologies, the Web has rapidly become a locus for user-created content, much of which copies, appropriates and mashes up copyrighted materials. The invitation to engage with the media-saturated environment has led to a proliferation of prosumerism through which many consumers have become producers of content. Appropriation and redeployment of copyrighted materials in the prosumption arena has drawn creators and right holders into conflict. Copyright owners seek to maintain control over information flows, whilst prosumers make (what they consider to be) fair uses of elements harvested from the media-saturated environment. This article is concerned with these tensions that — whilst not new — have been exacerbated by Web 2.0. Specifically, this article addresses the issue of fairness (in the context of the US fair use doctrine) in the digital age and questions whether powerful cultural forces require a reconfiguration of copyright law. Fairness is an elusive concept; in the realm of copyright, an act may simultaneously be decried as piracy and defended as a fair use. Web 2.0 has fostered a growing prosumer culture that freely appropriates from media sources to give effect to new works, and this article questions whether the customary practices of this emergent culture should impact upon the legal construction of fairness.

Fair use doctrine in copyright law is widely known as a difficult and unpredictable area of legal doctrine. Recently, the “transformative use” doctrine has emerged as a dominant approach to fair use determinations. Some courts are even viewing as transformative appropriations that do not alter the original work in any way, but that simply use it in a different functional context from its original creator. This article examines and critiques this novel “transformative purpose” approach to fair use and suggests that the approach may create even more indeterminacy in an already confused fair use landscape.

Pakistan has to face a tremendous pressure from Western countries due to widespread book piracy. This study presents the results of a survey of the book trade regarding copyright and book piracy in the country. International conventions to which Pakistan is a signatory and national copyright law and its implementation are described. American views on the situation of copyright in Pakistan are summarized. The survey reveals that the high price of foreign books is the main cause of book piracy. Local publishers and booksellers are the major beneficiaries of book piracy. Suggestions are given to protect intellectual copyright in Pakistan. Concludes that measures to minimize book piracy will not be successful until books at low price are available for local readers.

This article explores the relationship between aspects of copyright law (as understood in France), copying as a practice employed or condemned by fashion designers (sometimes both at the same time), and the meaning that ‘authorship’ has for the political economy of fashion production. The empirical substance is the result of 18 months of research in the fashion industry in two locations: Paris and Tehran. Foucault’s archaeological method applied to ‘the author’ points to the constellation of conditions that make the existence of the author possible. This study follows ‘the author’ in two differently located fields of power, interrelated through similar and communicating practices. The first part of the article presents the historic formation of legal authorship in the (Paris) fashion industry, the practices of authoring fashion, and the current legal debates connected to the European Law. The second part is an ethnography of the dynamic of authoring practices in Tehran.

This paper introduces the articles in this issue of MIA on the theme of ‘Copyright, Media, and Innovation’. The paper also provides a context for these articles via a discussion of historical and contemporary issues in copyright law, particularly in relation to new technologies.

In the field of digital sampling, disk jockeys have shown a recent enthusiasm for ‘mash-ups’ — new compositions created by combining the rhythm tracks of one song and the vocal track of another. Most famously of all, DJ Danger Mouse remixed the vocals from Jay-Z's The Black Album and the Beatles' White Album and called his creation The Grey Album. The Grey Album poses a number of difficult issues regarding copyright law and digital sampling. Does such a ‘mash-up’ go beyond the de minimis use of a copyright work? Is The Grey Album protected by the defence of fair use under copyright law because it provides a transformative use of copyright works? Can such remixes by compulsorily licensed? Does a ‘mash-up’ raise issues concerning the moral rights of attribution and integrity, which are recognised in Europe and Australia?

Changes to Australian copyright law introduced under the Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement will diminish the public domain, criminalise common copyright infringing practices and locally introduce significant portions of the controversial 1998 American Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This paper examines these imminent changes to Australian copyright law, with specific attention to the potential effects of the extended duration of copyright protection and the introduction of technological anti-circumvention measures. It argues that public domain-enhancing activities are crucial for sustaining cultural creativity and technological innovation, and discusses the potential role of the Creative Commons movement in establishing economically viable and legal alternatives to the current model of trade-oriented copyright reform.

The development of the digital environment has given way to the generalized online exploitation of intellectual works, so that licensing agreements are replacing sales as the habitual form of procuring access and use. This means that contract law acquires unprecedented relevance in publisher-user relations. The partial displacement of copyright law by contract law is not exempt from problems: through these licensing agreements libraries are being obligated, either by the absence of negotiation or the lack of balanced agreements, to renounce the enjoyment of copyright limitations and exceptions that benefit them, interfering with their important social role of helping citizens obtain information. The solutions to this problem can be found in three different yet complementary approaches: the constitution of consortia, greater information and training for professionals, and finally - and this is the focus of the analysis presented here - the modification of copyright law so that licences that stipulate against the most fundamental limitations and exceptions to copyright might be declared null and void, in the interest of maintaining a copyright equilibrium.

Although laws and policies developed in the context of off-line research apply to online investigations, questions about the identifiability of human subjects, the conceptualization of privacy, the need for and means of obtaining informed consent, and the applicability of copyright law to computer-mediated communication (CMC) pose special problems for doing research in cyberspace.

New and extended rights for performers have been introduced into UK copyright law as a result of EC Directives. It is widely supposed that they will make performers better off. In this article we attempt to test that assumption by analysing these changes with the focus on the music industry. We discuss the role of collecting societies in implementing these rights, and speculate on the costs of collection, the potential value of the rights and who will pay for them. Evidence is presented for the UK with references to Denmark and Sweden. We conclude that it is not obvious that all performers will be better off as a result.

This article addresses and contests a particular narrative about the history of copyright law's engagement with music, an exemplary version of which is to be found in Lydia Goehr's highly influential The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works(1992). According to this narrative, copyright law's conception of the musical object that it protects by means of a property right derives from an aesthetic conception of the musical ‘work’ that itself emerged from the field of musical practice, theory and criticism around 1800. Yet an analysis of the case law arising under the first modern copyright legislation of 1710 shows that copyright was recognized as vested in the composer of a musical ‘writing’ as early as 1777 in England, and that an embryonic legal ‘work-concept’ had already taken shape a decade or more earlier than that. This concept developed through a complex set of articulations between the doctrinal logic of property law and, especially, economic and aesthetic understandings of what a musical artefact was and where its value resided. However, far from simply absorbing aesthetic ideas about musical or other cultural practices, it is argued here that copyright's categories have developed relatively autonomously of these and other ‘external’ influences. Further, being only relatively autonomous, they have also actively helped to shape what is assumed – by Goehr and other historians of culture – to have shaped them. In short, the central claim of this article is that the work done by intellectual property discourse in forging conceptions of cultural form has been significant and important, and that copyright doctrine has accordingly played a major role in producing that plural construct which is known as ‘the’ musical work-concept.

Most educators know what copyright law allows and restricts when it comes to printed materials. Few understand its appli cation to software, however. The author, an expert in copyright issues, goes into detail here in his discussion of new applications brought about by new technology.

A long time in the making, the new copyright law provides educators with opportunities they did not have with the 1909 law. The new law also contains prohibitions that educators must heed. The writers outline both in this article after briefly describing how the new legislation evolved.

l Music educators are continually involved in the creation of original material that is eligible for copyright protection. For the educator in the general music area, this ongoing creative process may consist of writing new lecture material. For those in the instrumental field, the process may center around composing new music for school productions, concerts, revues, or similar events. In all of these activities, questions may arise concerning how the teacher's sole rights to the material he creates are to be preserved for his exclusive benefit. He will

Before Congress for revision this year is the nation's 1909 copyright law. Proposed changes and how they might affect educators is the topic of this article.

HE Music Publishers' Protective Association has been in existence for a period of over fifteen years. It has devoted itself to the study of copyright infringements and to the protection of the copyrights of its members against any unauthorized use of their copyrighted works. Within the last two years it has been giving considerable attention to the infringement of copyrights that are occurring in the various school systems throughout the country, and as a result of its study many cases of deliberate infringement have come to its attention.