"Copyrights history, theory and context" [2019] ELECD 2273; in Foong, Cheryl (ed), "The Making Available Right" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 12

Book Title: The Making Available Right

Editor(s): Foong, Cheryl

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: Copyrights history, theory and context

Number of pages: 40

Abstract/Description:

This chapter lays the foundation for critical analysis by introducing the relevant copyright history, theory and context. It discusses copyright’s Anglo-Saxon history, particularly the development of public performance rights, and contrasts this background with the current communications era facilitated by the Internet. It provides the theoretical framework for analysis, taking copyright’s fundamental functions as the starting point. These functions are: (1) incentivizing authorship and (2) encouraging the dissemination of content. It explains conventional and prevalent theories of copyright, and in the process highlights their lack of regard for copyright’s dissemination function. This chapter identifies existing scholarship that provides a starting point for building our understanding of copyright’s dissemination function, and reflects on how this preliminary discourse can be developed further in the context of the making available right. In introducing copyright’s dissemination function, it emphasizes the importance of this function to the sustainability of copyright in the internet age.