澳大利亚的知识产权(IP)和版权保护-Intellectual Property (IP) and Copyright pretection in Australia
1 Definition 定义
知识产权是指原有的发明者兼具艺术性和商业的作品的独家权利。通常情况下,任何知识产权拥有控制一段时间的生产和适应的权利。
Intellectual Property means a bundle of exclusive rights over the original inventors as thanking to their creations of minds both artistic and commercial. Usually, any Intellectual property has endow the rights to control the reproduction and adaptation for a certain period.
知识产权在社会的应用领域方面,知识产权可以分为两个分支:工业产权和版权[1]。工业产权涉及的技术和设计发明或专利,商业秘密,商标和资源,它保持原来的设计,风格或发明的对象,并提供拥有人专用权的商业开发初探权。著作权权利包括思想,研究,标识,多媒体,计算机程序,小说,诗歌,音乐,电影,绘画,电视节目或录像,广播和其他原创作品的文学或艺术原始表达的所有权,这是受版权法保护的[2]。
As regards for the application fields of Intellectual Property in society, the IP could individed into two branchs: Industrial Property and Copyright[1]. The Industrial Property relates with the technological and design inventions or patents, trade secret, trademarks, and indication of resources, which maintains the concept of original design, style or object of invention and provides the owners exclusive right to commercial exploiation. The Copyright right includes the ownership of literary or artistic original expression of ideas, researches, logos, multimedia, computer progams, novels, poems, musics, films, drawings, television programs or recordings, broadcasters and other original works, which are protected by copyright laws[2]. As for the action of Intellectual Property, the society is aim to provide the motivation for the creators or authors to develop and share the property information rather than keep it as a secret. Thus, the IP is not only a permmition for the creation of mind, it also a strong protecting measure for the exclusive rights.
Over the years, the legal protection of the IP laws has guaranteed the credits for this kind of exclusive rights. For instance, along with pouplar application and internet network spreading, more and more copyrights are threatened into dangers through the widely application of DVDs, CDs, iPods and other similar mobile media devices. The cases of copyright offence increased such as Kazaa, Kulove other devices in the recent years[3]. Thus, the practise of Intellectual property is necessary to prevent the copyright from any infringement or plagiarism offences. The IP laws define that the works or papers including the progam designs, researchs papers, dissertations and other artistic works are reported with large parts of homologies with other original works, which are regarded as a infringement offences if also there is no any references information or note indications[4].#p#分页标题#e#
2 Current Copyright laws for IP pretection in Australia 澳大利亚现行著作法对知识产权的保护
According to the special copyright of Austialia copyright laws, the copyright is an intangible thing based on the a person’s innovative abilities, which holds the authority by the creators and is different from the general physical property[5]. The copyright law is designed to prevent the illegal infringement offence from the original texture expressed by the author.
Though, the Copyrights authority of the original creators for original artistic works such as the research results, multimedia, and television programs are not registered specially, Australia hold the most strict liability for the copyright law bill. According to the 13 Nov. report of Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Commintee, it demonstrated that this kind of strict liability is a new measure to control both commmercial and non-commmercial copyright from infringement offence penalty system in Australia. The hugh changes for the sweeping revisions of copyright laws in Australia is based on the Australian Copyright Act 1968 and aim to welcome the arrival of digital era. Specially, the No-fault penalties which requires no proof of motive or knowledge of infringement offences are also included in the new IP laws in Australia[6]. The law also provided wide scale of right for government police and social prosecutors to against the suspected offenders according to the governmental explanatory memorandum.
As for the proposal of no-fault penalties, it gained strong support by the foes, lawmakers and some ardent backers, even from the other countries’ government department. Some domestic copyright owners said that the no-fault penalties will keep the infringement in a low-scale of spreading. “Moreover, other countries’ IP laws are not included the no-fault penalties with such strict liability such as United States, Britain, and Canada” said Larry Wilson. In fact, it required no such strict liability and no-fault penalties in the previous Australia-United States Free Trade Act and the Australian Industrial property laws[7].
3 Arguments for and against protecting IP 支持和反对知识产权保护的争论
At once the proposal of such IP laws bill in Australia, it has brought to wide scale of sparked strong debates. Some supportors including the lawmakers, some governors argued that the approval of the bill would help to prevent the degeneration and neglection of copyright protection in future digital age though the strict liability or summary and indictable offences. Moreover, it is the time to precaution of widely infringement offences[6]. Thus, these supportors or the lawmakers believed that the bill of this new IP laws could reach the most effective limitation for before the phenomenon of infringement developed out of control.
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However, the criticists believed that such strict law is not always necessary to protect the copyright of authors or designers[6]. They argued that the bill has itself poor point which maybe allow the policers or executors to indicte frequently more alleged offenders, though who could be penaled with lesser strict liability or summary offences. Otherwise, it increases the prossibility of innocent and mischarged infringement offenders. Especially, in the free culture movement the Intellectual protection or such monopoly control for Intellectual property is not very suitable to the culture advancement. If it is real, the public interest for modern culturation will be harm by the protecting item of IP laws such as copyright extension, software patents and management patents[1]. Therefore, though the Intellectual Property is widely used in the world, many critics oppposed it tegether through the united protest. That is why Richard Stallman stongly suggested one collective concept for disparating laws seperately[8].
4 Kazaa case in Australia 澳大利亚的Kazaa案例
Kazaa is one software based on the resource share such as music, television showing, digital data, books, games and movies on the internet network. It established by progammers of Dutch company consumer empowerment in 2001. Till now, the Kazaa has become the most welcomed file-sharing software with the amount of millions and thousands of users in the world[9].
Nevertheless, currently the Kazaa received the penal decision of the Federal Court of Australia for the infringement based internet sharing files. The decision of Australia considered the style of internet sharing of Kazaa as a serious infringement offence for their copyright laws in order to object the internet piracy and infringement. Finally, the Full Court decide to their judges and penality to order Kazaa cease the infringing copyright. The Kazaa is still contempt against with the lawsuit decision though they adopted some meatures to deal with the internet copyright laws such as halting download distribution[10].
Inlcuding the music, movies, books and other information, it could obtained freely from the download of Kazaa. The Kazaa achieved the really enjoyment share of the global multimedia industry. As regard for the indicting of other music companies, it maybe involved in many economic competitions. For example, It is reported that the popularity of Kazaa’s P2P file sharing software caused the music industry an estimated 300 millon dollar in CD sales in 2003[11]. Thus, the music companies jointly indicted the Kazaa and others for the copyright infringement. However, these music companies while fighting in court usually focused the pollution of music industry. They said the quality of music downloaded by Kazaa is not well performed and bad sound quality with blipping noise, fake songs and fake copies[12]. These music companies did not show the rationable reasons, and instead to frustrate their users by the focus of music quality.#p#分页标题#e#
Therefore, in my opinion, the internet is a absolutely nice infromation access way. Hence, the internet has improve the vision of people to the world. It is not for anyone company or organitzation. Everybody has the authority to access to the internet information. As long as the really file sharing achieved, the innovation of creators, patent, works, musics, songs, games and movies could reach the most knowledge of the public. The culture could be reach the real freely sharing. Of course, my opinion is not taken account of the abundant accessories or advertisement with the Kazaa software and the users’ privacy and security issues.
To summary, the Kazaa or other sharing softwares should be developed largely with enough reference and notice attentions or respects to the authority of person’s copyright.
Reference 参考文献:
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property
[2]Gowers, Andrew. "Gowers Review of Intellectual Property". Her Majesty's Treasury, December 2006. ISBN-13: 9-780118-4083-9.
[3] Sokoloff, K. L. and Z. Kahn (2000): "Intellectual Property Institutions in States: Early Development and Comparative Perspective," UCLA.
[4] Infringement: actions, remedies, offences and penalties (2007). www.copyright.org.au/pdf/acc/infosheets_pdf/G063.pdf
[3]http://www.encyclocentral.com/25262-Copyright_Intellectual_Property_Right_Violation_Criminal_Offence_Universal_Copyright.html
[5] A Short Guild (2005). Copyright Law in Australia. Commonwelth of Australia. Access to http://www.copyright.com.au
[6] http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/ip/introduction.shtml
[7] Woeld Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) (2007). Understanding Copyright and Related Rights. WIPO Publication No. 909(E), ISBN 92-805-1265-4.
[8]Wilson L (2003).http://www.ag.gov.au/
[9] http://www.kazaa.com/
[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazaa
[11] http://www.accralaw.com/sub.php?p=news&s=article&id=12
[12] http://www.kazaa.com/us/index.htm