Copyright Criminality:The construction of a Moral Panic

Origins

Gutenberg

The Stationer's Company

Letters Patent

Statute of Monopolies of 1623

Licensing Act of 1662

 "An Act for preventing the frequent Abuses in printing seditious treasonable and unlicensed Bookes and Pamphlets

and for regulating of Printing and Printing Presses."

Statute of Anne 1710 ‘A bill for the encouragement of

learning’

Donaldson v Beckett, 98 Eng. Rep. 257 (1774)

“The arguments attempted to be maintained on the side of the respondents, were founded on patents, privileges, Star Chamber decrees, and the bye laws of the Stationers' Company; all of them the effects of the grossest tyranny and usurpation; the very last places in which I should have dreamt of finding the least trace of the common law of this kingdom; and yet, by a variety of subtle reasoning and metaphysical refinements, have they endeavored to squeeze out the spirit of the common law from premises in which it could not possibly have existence."

Lord Camden in Donaldson v Beckett

• 01• 10• 11

• 100• 101• 110• 111

• 1000• 1001• 1010

Digital

manuscript

read

read aloud

quote

lend

burn

copy

gloss

re-mix

text

read

read aloud

quote

lend

burn

gloss

copy

re-mix

digital

read

read aloud

quote

lend?

burn?

gloss

copy

re-mix

DMCA

World Intellectual Property Organisation Copyright Treaty

Technical Protection Measures

Anti­circumvention

Secondary liability

2.3 Moreover, UCT must meet certain requirements and obligations that safeguard against unauthorised access and reproduction. Thus, where an extract of a work is temporarily placed on the institution's Intranet, only those students enrolled for the particular course of study may be granted access rights to the extract in question. The materials must be removed from the Intranet and/or made inaccessible when the course to which they pertain ends and/or when all students have had an opportunity to print out a personal copy of the materials in question. Students should be cautioned against and, preferably, barred from running off multiple copies of any extracts offered for the sole purpose to print a personal paper copy. Thus, individual students ought not to be allowed to send more than two print commands over the network.....

How did we end up here?

Moral Panic

Moral Panic

"a condition, episode, person or group of persons [who] become defined as a 

threat to societal values and interests."

Folk Devils and Moral Panics, Cohen, 1987: 9

• "If we have to file a thousand lawsuits a day, we'll do it. It's less expensive than losing control of your creative works."

• Jack Valenti, President and CEO,Motion Picture Association of America (

• the 1000th copy of a DVD, ... is as pure and pristine as the original. You strip away all the protective clothing of that DVD and leave it naked and alone." 

• Jack Valenti

• Photocopying could bring publishers to their knees

• Monica Seeber, March 31, 2004

•  "Plagiarism has become an epidemic at American college and universities" 

(in)conclusions

Digitisation and Copyright

What is digitisation?

Is it anything at all? Is it a copy? Is it a derivative work? 

Material form

Section 1 (2) A work, except a broadcast or programme­carrying signal, shall not be eligible for copyright unless the work has been written down, recorded, represented in digital data or signals or otherwise reduced to a material form.

“any manner or form”

8. Nature of copyright in cinematograph films

(1) Copyright in a cinematograph film vests the exclusive right to do or to authorize the doing

of any of the following acts in the Republic:

(a) Reproducing the film in any manner or form, including making a still photograph

therefrom

“copy”

“copy” means a reproduction of a work, and, in the case of a literary, musical or artistic

work, a cinematograph film or a computer program, also an adaptation thereof: Provided

that an object shall not be taken to be a copy of a work of architecture unless the object is a

building or a model of a building;

“reproduction”“reproduction”, in relation to ­(a) a literary or musical work or a broadcast, includes 

a reproduction in the form of a record or a cinematograph film;

(b) an artistic work, includes a version produced by converting the work into a three dimensional form or, if it is in three dimensions, by converting it into a

two­dimensional form;(c) any work, includes a reproduction made from a 

reproduction of that work;

(1) In this Act, unless the context otherwise indicates ­

“adaptation”, in relation to ­

(a) a literary work, includes ­

(i) in the case of a non­dramatic work, a version of the work in which it is

converted into a dramatic work;

(ii)  in  the  case  of  a  dramatic  work,  a  version  of  the  work  in  which  it  is converted

into a non­dramatic work;

(iii) a translation of the work; or

(iv) a version of the work in which the story or action is conveyed wholly or

mainly by means of pictures in a form suitable for reproduction in a book or in a

newspaper, magazine or similar periodical;

(b) a musical work, includes any arrangement or transcription of the work, if such

arrangement or transcription has an original creative character;

(c) an artistic work, includes a transformation of the work in such a manner that the original or substantial features thereof remain recognizable;

adaptation

What rights does someone who digitises a work acquire?

originality?

independent skill and effort

new material

“the improvement or refinement is not superficial. The alteration to the original work must be substantial.”

“But copying, per se, however much skill or labour may be devoted to 

the process, cannot make an original work.’ 

(Interlego A G v Tyco Industries Inc [1989] AC 217 (PC) at 263)