Farchy, Joelle; Rohelandet, Fabrice --- "Copyright protection, appropriability and new cultural behaviour" [2002] ELECD 56; 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 11

Section Title: Copyright protection, appropriability and new cultural behaviour

Author(s): Farchy, Joelle; Rohelandet, Fabrice

Number of pages: 18

Extract:

11. Copyright protection, appropriability
and new cultural behaviour
Joëlle Farchy and Fabrice Rochelandet

11.1 INTRODUCTION

Digital technologies1 facilitate almost immediate, costless and perfect
reproduction as well as easy modification of copyright content. More
generally, they have contributed towards the emergence of digital networks,
which significantly increase communication and data exchanges. In this
context, the producers2 of protected content emphasize the risk of widespread
unauthorized copying like piracy and consequently very high commercial
losses. Digital private copying is the non-commercial, perfect reproduction by
individuals of musical, audiovisual, literary, multimedia and software
copyrighted works. They can be digitized and some are digital by nature.
Copiers can obtain them from already existing physical carriers. They can also
download them from Internet sites on their hard disk and engrave the files on
recordable CDs (CDRs). This chapter investigates whether this causes market
failure, and considers possible solutions.
As with analogue private copying, and in contrast to industrial piracy,
digital private copying is non-commercial and allowed by law when it
takes place within a `family circle'.3 However, several essential features
distinguish the two forms of private copying: the widening of the field of
copiable works, the diversification of the sources from which copies may be
obtained, the same hardware and media and the perfect reproduction of
originals (`cloning'). The legal principle of the exception for private copying
is applied in nearly all European countries. In France, an author cannot
oppose `the copies or reproductions strictly reserved to the private use ...