In copyright law, there is a necessity for little flexibility as to what constitutes authorship.

Copyright law has been amended time and time again since the inception of the law to extend the length of this fixed period where the work is exclusively controlled by the copyright holder.

Questions arise as to the application of copyright law.

The terms of the Artistic License 1. 0 were at issue in a 2007 federal district court decision in the US which was criticized by some for suggesting that FOSS-like licenses could only be enforced through contract law rather than through copyright law, in contexts where contract damages would be difficult to establish.

* 1710 – The Statute of Anne, the first law regulating copyright, enters into force in Great Britain.

Many BBSes inspected every file uploaded to their public file download library to ensure that the material did not violate copyright law.

Another approach denies the meaningfulness of any ethical justification for existing copyright law, viewing it simply as a result ( and perhaps an undesirable result ) of political processes.

Some critics claim copyright law protects corporate interests while criminalizing legitimate use, while proponents argue the law is fair and just.

Aside from the role of governments and the church, the history of copyright law is in essential ways also connected to the rise of capitalism and the attendant extension of commodity relations to the realm of creative human activities, such as literary and artistic production.

Not until capitalism emerges in Europe with its individualist ideological underpinnings does the conception of intellectual property and by extension copyright law emerge.

In many jurisdictions, copyright law makes exceptions to these restrictions when the work is copied for the purpose of commentary or other related uses ( See fair use, fair dealing ).

Copyright law recognises the right of an author based on whether the work actually is an original creation, rather than based on whether it is unique ; two authors may own copyright on two substantially identical works, if it is determined that the duplication was coincidental, and neither was copied from the other.

For example, in English law the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 provides that if a copyrighted work is made by an employee in the course of that employment, the copyright is automatically owned by the employer which would be a " Work for Hire.

Expansion of U. S. copyright law ( Assuming authors create their works at age 35 and live for seventy years )

Courts in the United States and the United Kingdom have rejected the doctrine of a common law copyright.

* List of copyright case law

A 1993 court determined that the copyright loophole suggested by Ace Books was incorrect and its paperback edition was found to have been a violation of copyright under US law.

He was the first well-known American to try to live by writing alone and was hampered by the lack of an international copyright law.

In 1980 copyright law was extended to computer programs.

A lot of lobbying work has been done against software patents and expansions of copyright law.

Under current laws the novel will remain under copyright protection until 2020 in the European Union and until 2044 in the United States.

The European Union Directive on harmonising the term of copyright protection of 1993 extended the copyrights to 70 years after the author's death.

European Union Directives which largely cover the subject matter of the treaty are: Directive 91 / 250 / EC creating copyright protection for software, Directive 96 / 9 / EC on copyright protection for databases and Directive 2001 / 29 / EC prohibiting devices for circumventing " technical protection measures " such as digital rights management.

In addition, the European Union adopted its own copyright term extension around the same time.

A key factor in the CTEA ’ s passage was a 1993 European Union ( EU ) directive instructing EU members to establish a baseline copyright term of life plus 70 years and to deny this longer term to the works of any non-EU country whose laws did not secure the same extended term.

By extending the baseline United States copyright term, Congress sought to ensure that American authors would receive the same copyright protection in Europe as their European counterparts.

The film has been released on video in its entirety in various European, Latin American, and Asian countries — in the UK it was released on PAL VHS tape in 1982 and again in 1991, and in Japan ( where under Japanese copyright law it is in the public domain ) it appeared on NTSC VHS, BETA and laserdisc with subtitles, while a NTSC laserdisc was bootlegged in Hong Kong from the UK PAL videotape.

In the European Union, even if a Member State provides for the possibility of a legal person to be the original rightholder ( such as is possible in the UK ), then the duration of protection is in general the same as the copyright term for a personal copyright: i. e., for a literary or artistic work, 70 years from the death of the human author, or in the case of works of joint authorship, 70 years from the death of the last surviving author.

U. S. Games has the copyright on the original cards in both the U. S. and European Union.

On July 4, 2008, MSX Association's European contact website, which states to be the " only official contact place for MSX Association in Europe ", reports that the MSX trademark and copyright has been under the MSX Licensing Corporation holding ever since 1983.

The European system of national and regional accounts ( ESA95 ) explicitly includes produced intangible assets ( e. g. mineral exploitation, computer software, copyright protected entertainment, literary and artistics originals ) within the definition of fixed assets.

The copyright law of the European Union has arisen in an attempt to harmonise the differing copyright laws of European Union member states.

Attempts to harmonise copyright law in Europe ( and beyond ) can be dated to the signature of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works on 9 September 1886: all European Union Member States are signatories of the Berne Convention, and compliance with its dispositions is now obligatory before accession.

The first major step taken by the European Economic Community to harmonise copyright laws came with the decision to apply common standard for the copyright protection of computer programs, enacted in the Computer Programs Directive in 1991.

The first judgments of the European Court of Justice covering copyright were made under the non-discrimination provision of Article 6 EC ( formerly Art.

* European Union 95 year recording copyright extension proposal

Council Directive 93 / 98 / EEC of 29 October 1993 harmonising the term of protection of copyright and certain related rights is a European Union directive in the field of copyright law, made under the internal market provisions of the Treaty of Rome.

It is often stated that 70 years pma was the longest copyright term of any Member State at the time: this is not strictly correct, and is not quoted as the reason for the choice in the directive.

Where a Member State protected a work for a longer period at the time the directive came into force, the copyright term is not reduced, but other Member States will not respect the longer period.

The proposal became a major focus for conflict between those who regarded the proposed directive as a way to codify the case law of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office ( unrelated to the EU institutions ) in the sphere of computing, and those who asserted that the directive is an extension of the patentability sphere, not just a harmonisation, that ideas are not patentable and that the expression of those ideas is already adequately protected by the law of copyright.

The Guild is a campaigning union and recent effective lobbying efforts have concentrated on MEPs considering the European copyright directive, and MPs, peers and the media over the Communications Bill and the BBC Charter renewal.

The UK copyright was subsequently extended through 2007 by a European Union directive in 1996 standardising terms throughout the EU to the author's life plus 70 years.

is a European Union directive in the field of copyright law, made under the internal market