Macmillan, Fiona --- "Copyright and corporate power" [2002] ELECD 52; in Towse, Ruth (ed), "Copyright in the Cultural Industries" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2002)

Book Title: Copyright in the Cultural Industries

Editor(s): Towse, Ruth

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781840646610

Section: Chapter 7

Section Title: Copyright and corporate power

Author(s): Macmillan, Fiona

Number of pages: 20

Extract:

7. Copyright and corporate power
Fiona Macmillan1

7.1 INTRODUCTION
This chapter considers the relationship that copyright has to `culture',2 on the
one hand, and to matters that might be loosely grouped around concepts of
trade and economics, on the other. It does not attempt to argue that matters of
culture and matters of trade exist in mutually exclusive domains, nor does it
attempt to argue that these two matters are necessarily incompatible within a
body of law serving the function of copyright law.3 What the chapter does try
to do is to show that the focus of the Anglo-Saxon model of copyright law on
economic rights has facilitated the build-up of significant bases of private
power over cultural output and that these bases of private power now threaten
not just the cultural development function of copyright but the very idea of
cultural development.


7.2 CULTURE AND DEVELOPMENT
The utilitarian/development justification for copyright is overwhelmingly
familiar. A well-known example appears in the Preface to the World
Intellectual Property Organization's Guide to the Berne Convention for the
Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (WIPO, 1978), which states:

Copyright, for its part, constitutes an essential element in the development process.
Experience has shown that the enrichment of the national cultural heritage depends
directly on the level of protection afforded to literary and artistic works. The higher
the level, the greater the encouragement for authors to create; the greater the number
of a country's ...