Copyright infringement
A copyright infringement, copyright infringement, or copyright violation is an unauthorized or prohibited use of works covered by copyright laws, such as the right to copy, reproduce or produce a derivative work.
It is also common to use the term piracy, often in a pejorative way, to refer to copies of works without the consent of the copyright holder. Computer scientist Richard Stallman and intellectual property expert Eduardo Samán, among others, argue that the use of the expression "piracy" to refer to unauthorized copies is an exaggeration that tries to equate the act of sharing with the violence of ship pirates, criminalizing users. The Free Software Foundation includes this meaning of the term in its list of expressions to avoid in terms of copyright.
The scope of the protection of works at the international level is governed by the Berne Convention, which establishes a minimum term of 50 years from the author's death. The way in which the legislation should treat these infractions is an issue that generates controversy in many countries around the world.
Regulation by country
Chile
One year after joining the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and according to the Business Software Alliance (BSA, an association that brings together the main software companies in Chile and the rest of the world), Chile continues as the member with the highest rate of unauthorized copying of software. However, said study is criticized regarding the accuracy of its measurements, appealing to the rigor and methodologies applied to the Global Software Piracy Study.
According to a study by the consultancy International Data Corporation (IDC), the infringement rate in the field of software in Chile reaches 64%. According to the study, only 25% of Chilean companies have a formal policy for the use of licensed software, which corresponds to the lowest percentage among the countries surveyed. This contrasts with what the companies say, where 56% say they have some kind of basic protocol, according to the information provided by the technology managers of the firms consulted.
Regarding legislation, Chile has Law No. 17,336, on Intellectual Property, of October 2, 1970, and its subsequent amendments that regulate copyright.
This law protects the rights of Chilean and foreign authors domiciled in Chile. It also establishes that foreign authors not domiciled in the country enjoy the protection recognized by the international conventions that Chile has signed and ratified.
Chile is also a regular member of the US Priority Watch List, due to the recommendation made by the IIPA (International Intellectual Property Alliance), compared to what they consider to be a high rate of infringements that the country maintains. Due to legal obligations, voluntarily acquired through the Free Trade Agreement with the United States (FTA). The impact of belonging to this list means suffering in your commercial prestige; loss of business opportunities with the United States and with other developed nations; and that Chilean exporting companies could become potential targets of the new US unfair competition laws, which primarily target foreign companies that export to the United States and that have not licensed the software they use in their production processes.
Columbia
In Colombia, the body that regulates and protects copyright is the National Directorate of Copyright, and the law that governs copyright is Law 23 of 1982.
In order to comply with the commercial obligations contracted with the United States after the signing of the Free Trade Agreement between Colombia and the United States, Colombia began to process a series of projects that modified the copyright law; popularly known as "Lleras Law".
Bill 206 of 2018, which was finally approved on May 22, 2018, became known as “Lleras Law 6.” This project was processed with an urgent message from the government within a month and a half because the Santos government needed to comply with a US requirement, which had conditioned its endorsement for Colombia to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in the fulfillment of pending commercial obligations.
Ecuador
Despite the need to require the authorization of the author or copyright holder for the exploitation of the work, there are exceptions contemplated in article 83 of the Ecuadorian Intellectual Property Law.
Spain
The Spanish law that regulates copyright contemplates private copying as an exception, that is, it authorizes individuals to copy or reproduce a protected work for private use of it, provided they have had access legitimate to the copied original. Not surprisingly, the Constitution, a hierarchically superior norm, establishes everyone's right to culture.
According to data extracted from the annual report of the Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts of the Ministry of Culture, in 2008 around nine million fewer tickets were sold, 39 movie theaters were closed, causing the disappearance of 156 movie screens. cinema[citation required].
The situation has changed in the face of the slump of the years 2005-2008, and viewers began to go more frequently to the theaters. According to the consultancy Nielsen EDI, in Spain, in 2009 Spanish cinemas broke collection records, surpassing the previous highest record, from 2004. The reasons indicated were the attractiveness of new releases and technical innovations; the report did not link the evolution of the box office or viewers with the evolution of copyright infringement.
During successive years, Spain continues to be part of the 301 List or Priority Watchlist. This report dedicates 17 pages to Spain in which it indicates a series of requirements and suggestions to the Spanish authorities to correct the infractions, which qualify as "out of control".[citation required< /i>] It also praises the draft of the Sustainable Economy Law (known as the Sinde Law by which an administrative body may order the closure or block of linked websites, prior express authorization of a court judge). Among the suggestions included in the 301 List, different acts can be seen, such as increasing the staff to investigate Internet activities, in the Ministry of the Interior, the Civil Guard and the National Police, allowing rights owners to obtain the information necessary to take civil actions, take necessary actions to ensure that modchips (chips used to jailbreak various consoles so that they are capable of running unauthorized copies and homebrew) and similar devices are illegal, develop an effective advertising campaign, among many other things others.
United States
The United States is the main country in terms of prosecution of copyright infringers, with very aggressive legislation in this regard. There, the Priority Watchlist is prepared annually, a report drawn up by the main associations of producers and publishers and which is sent to the US Department of Commerce to put pressure on countries that, in their view, do not respect copyright law in that country enough. Products directly or indirectly related to intellectual property represent about 35% of the US GDP.
Mexico
Mexico would be among the eleven countries where copyright infringements occur with the greatest intensity, affecting the United States economy. This claim had already been raised long before, so under pressure from international organizations and the United States, President Vicente Fox launched the most ambitious program against the sale of music and movies reproduced without authorization in Mexico, called the war against piracy, his first movement was The National Accord Against Piracy, which was concerned not only with infringements related to film and music; if not also of the dress, the software and authors in general. This agreement stated that for its success the three orders of government (Federal, State and Municipal), the powers that support the State (Legislative, Executive and Judicial) and of course, the Copyright Protection Organizations interested in the solution should participate. that this new agreement promised to fulfill.
This agreement was based on strategies: Specific Strategic Lines for the Public Sector, Specific Strategic Line for the Productive Sector and an Educational Strategic Line, each with a different objective and way of acting, but which act together.
Mexican criminal law only deals with the most serious violations of the legal system, and within the framework of copyright, generally only conducts that involve copying or plagiarism of protected works are penalized, where two circumstances occur: the profit motive and damage to third parties, where the benefit obtained has special economic significance. The latter, in many cases, supposes a highly specialized activity, which seeks the commercialization of copied or plagiarized products, and is defined in acts such as the exhibition of copies in shops, sales catalogues, and others. Considering these rights as a form of ownership (and not as a right to use) makes it easier to criminalize unauthorized copying. It also allows the large multinationals that control these rights to be compared with other more serious crimes such as theft, which is why the National Agreement Against Piracy makes modifications to the legal penalties for those who do not comply with the law in terms of infractions of copyright. The law establishes that whoever fails to comply with the laws will be deprived of liberty from 3 to 10 years, and a penalty ranging from 2,000 to 20,000 days of fine, all this with the purpose of reducing offending users. During the last year of the Fox administration, more than 8,700 operations were carried out in the country to seize merchandise and arrest alleged sellers of unauthorized copies. On the other hand, Enrique Peña Nieto has had the six-year term with the lowest protection according to the US Special Report 301. However, according to the anthropologist José Carlos G. Aguiar, these policies seem to be more effective in criminalizing informal commerce than in effective control of the sale of unauthorized copies in popular markets and public space.
Consequences
In relation to the music industry, for most musicians their true source of income is live performance, not record sales. For some, therefore, the availability of musicians' material favors the number of people at their concerts. One of the means that favors this availability of material today is the use of P2P software that allows its users to share files over the Internet, although many hope that musicians will begin to abandon the concept of recorded disc to offer their material in alternative ways (such as, for example, downloads via FTP or similar), being able to set prices per piece/song or group of pieces much lower than current CD prices.
However, most of the big companies, and associations of authors, and performers best-sellers, do not agree with this point of view and allude to an alleged loss of jobs that will occur in the industry of the sector due to this activity. They also defend the right of authors to receive financial compensation for the use of their work, for an indefinite period of time, criticizing the current time limitations, arguing that "money, property, houses, businesses, companies, paintings, furniture and shoe stores are inherited to infinity, generation after generation, and no one disputes this and no one thinks it is wrong (...). Only the heirs of the artists "live from the story", when precisely these have not even bought what they own, but have created and invented it."
Numbers
Although the figures on unauthorized copies are questioned for their validity, conglomerates of companies in the sector have carried out studies that affirm that the world average of counterfeiting for the year 2006 was 35%, However, there are large variations of this figure depending on the region. Vietnam is the country with the highest figures: 97% of the software used is illegal, while in China it remains at 94%.
In Argentina, some claim that around 70% of the DVDs sold are illegal copies, while 75% of the software in use is counterfeit. While in all of Latin America it is estimated at 66%.
A study prepared by the International Data Corporation published by the Business Software Alliance maintains that copyright infringements generate losses, and that they would amount to USD 58.7 billion for the year 2010, 14.2% more than in 2009. In Argentina, it is stated that these alleged losses reached USD 681 million for the period 2005-2010.
The Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) released a detailed report titled The Cost of Movie Piracy, stating that during the In 2005, illegal downloads and sales of movies caused a theoretical loss of USD 18 billion to the film industry. It is also pointed out that the main ones affected by these practices are the large producers. According to these data, they would lose around USD 6.1 billion. The rest of the alleged losses, some 11.9 billion, would correspond to the network of distributors, exhibitors and other small producers.
On the other hand, a study carried out by the Swiss government concluded that copyright infringement does not generate losses or less income for the industry, in addition to considering downloading protected material legal.
Free culture
Copyright is a system dating back to the 18th century, however long before this and from the origins of humanity there has been Free Culture, which is a school of thought that promotes freedom in the distribution and modification of creative works based on the principle of free content to distribute or modify creative works and works, using the Internet as well as other media. For this, they share and distribute works in the public domain, in addition to creating artistic works with copyleft and creative commons licences, and in computer program environments they use free licenses such as GPL or Apache.
In this way, much of the information, books, music, movies and computer programs that are shared on the Internet, whether in peer networks or files hosted on the Internet, are completely legal and their distribution and redistribution is encouraged free and free since that is its objective and in these exchanges no copyright is violated because they do not exist.
When using works in the public domain it is impossible to infringe copyrights because they do not exist, since these can be used freely and derivative works can be made or profited from them, such is the case of the films that Disney makes based on works under public domain that produces and sells under copyright license, going on to make billions of dollars based on works that originally belong to the public domain.
See also
- Bootleg
- Digital Canon
- Free culture
- Right of private copy
- Pirate Party
- Plagio
- USG
- The Pirate Bay
- Top blanket