The authors' rights are a very important problem of the modern economic world. The rules that regulate the authors' rights have always been created in the reaction of some social facts; they always have been late on the sociological and technical transformations. The first fundamental act was the Statute of Anne in 1710. For the first time the notion of "copyright" was instituted but already on this time this decision just confirmed a social reality and the raise of importance of authors. After this first law almost nothing changed for authors during two centuries and it is just in 19th century that some improvement in their protection occurred. Today again the authors' rights are late on the reality. The internationalization narrowed peoples and cultures and internet gave the opportunity to exchange information very easily and quickly. In front of these evolutions it is essential today to protect in a better way authors. The sector of culture represents a very high turnover, for example just in the United States the turnover of this sector was last year 537 billiards of dollars. And nowadays it has great difficulties, and firstly the sector music obviously, linked directly with all the piracy that has grown with internet.
[...] The Berne Convention for the Protection of literary and artistic works stay a long time inefficient because most of important countries did not join it, but lastly it took more importance with the accession of countries as the United States which became a member in 1989. Today the convention has 17O members. The Berne Convention has two main roles. Firstly it creates some minimum standards for each member (very minimal rules as for example just that an artist has to be paid for its work etc.) and the “national treatment” for foreign works. [...]
[...] The main differences is in the Latin world the right of an author is attached to his/her person, it can not be sold, whereas in the Anglo-Saxon one the law distinguishes the author from its creation, which became a simple product which is possible to sell. The international organizations try to harmonize these systems by distinguishing two different notions economic rights and moral ones. Let see what are other particularities of the American a British system. American authors' right and notion of copyright 1 Copyright Two very important Acts defines the national authors' rights: the Copyright Act of 1909 and the one of 1978. [...]
[...] The main difference between the Latin and the British right is that in United Kingdom moral rights can be transmitted, whereas in the continental Europe they are attached to the person of the artist. The last important national decision taken in United Kingdom about the authors' rights is the extension of the penalty for the “thievery” of authors” rights from 2 to 10 years. Conclusion The Anglo-Saxon system of protection of authors' rights is quite different from the one of Latin countries. [...]
[...] The most important is probably the condemnation of Napster the famous internet free dealer of music in 2001. In the same way another competitor of Napster, Audiogalaxy was transformed on a paying service broadcaster. However professionals of music thought that their war against internet site was already won, but another decision disappointed their hopes. New kind of software arrived on the market: peer to peer software. This kind of new technologies are very different from the old ones because here they do not contain any information they just connect computers between them, what makes very difficult to struggle with them. [...]
[...] By authors we obviously mean all kind of authors: literacy authors, but also music composers, film directors, painters And rights include laws, common law, all kind of juridical rules in the United States and United Kingdom. It is particularly interesting to focus on these two countries because they were as we recalled on the beginning of the legislation on these rights and because that today they are the most acutely hit by the infringements of these rights. Finally it gives us the opportunity to compare the Anglo-Saxon rules with the ones of the Latin world and to see that again some notions are very specific to each system and that it takes much more time to build an international legislation. [...]
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