In the United States, copyright registration is a legal formality intended to make a public record of the basic facts of a particular copyright. Although registration is not a requirement for protection, US copyright law provides several advantages to encourage copyright owners to register the works such as: • Providing a public record of the copyright claim. • If registration of copyright is completed prior to or within five years of publication , it will create a clear proof as regards to the ownership of the copyright in any court of law and about the particulars mentioned in the certificate. If registration is made within 3 months after publication of the work or prior to an infringement of work , statutory damages and attorney’s fees will be available to the copyright owner in court actions .
Otherwise ,only an award or actual damages and profits is available to owner. • Registration allows the owner of the copyright to record the registration with the U. S customs service for protection against the importation of infringing of copies. Free down loading and copyrightsPiracy: Dawn of computers and internet technology has resulted in the abuse of internet technology by downloading the copyrighted music form the internet without actually spending on the CD’s, disc and tapes there by infringing the copyright laws of a country. The inventor of the music is accorded a copy right to it and in practice, this being virtually transferred to music producing company.
These music companies or producers are trying to deter the illegal duplication of their titles by monitoring piracy in global markets.But in this Internet era , music fans are able to search for and to exchange data files on line and the improvement of audio-encoding technologies ,which transfer sound to digital media , have resulted in unlawful reproduction in a massive scale which threatens to prevent large share of revenues to music producing companies. One may recall how earlier consumers used to spend on purchase of CD’s, disc, tape to listen and enjoy their favorite music.Thanks to the advent of the internet technology which allows the consumers to down load at free of cost their favorite music from their residence without any hassles and at their convenience and almost at zero cost . This has provoked the copyright owners and music industry as it has deprived of their revenue and legal rights. Free downloads from the internet have almost spoiled their earnings and have made them economically down.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) with its headquarters at London has announced that it has filed about 970 lawsuits in 2005 in countries including Netherlands, Japan, Finland and Iceland thereby bringing the total number of cases around 11,000 around the world. The world’s second largest music market, Japan, has lost about one third of music sales over the last five years.Online music piracy is flourishing well in South Korea and Taiwan. Another strategy for bringing a stop for the music piracy is to implore internet service providers to be more proactive about stopping people from illicitly sharing music. Further, the Recording Industry Association of America has announced that it would initiate legal action against 405 students at 18 US colleges who were found to be exploiting their university high speed computer networks to trade nearly a million pirated music songsThe international conventions and treaties on copyright law compel its member countries to amend the country’s Copyright Act to harmonize it with provisions of various international treaties.
In deference to such compulsion, USA, UK, EU has made certain amendments to its IPR Act. The music companies either hold the copyright or make pact with copyright owners to distribute their music and big corporations in this trade are AOL Music Net, Press play owned by Sony and Universal which is jointly owned by EMI, AOL Time Warner and BMG and Real Networks, iTunes and European music companies such as OD2, Wippit and Tornado Virtue.Online digital music delivery has been dominated by piracy and after the closure of Napster , illegitimate music online downloading can found globally on P2P file-sharing services such as KaZaA , Grnutella ,Groekster , Imesh These sites are allowing free downloads and neitizens are allowed to download licensed and unlicensed files of music. For instance in the USA, Napster company has been sued for the infringement of copyright laws by A& M and other music companies. At last, Napster lost the case as the court ruled that sharing of music by internet consumers is not a suit of fair dealing. Napster was not only sued by the music industry but also by consumers, artist and retailers.
Napster was sued by Metallica band and rapper Dr. Dre. Bertelsmann AG , a German music giant also known as BMG Entertainment , having realized that it could not withstand the war with the Napster finally decided to join them by striking a $ 50 million deal in exchange for a new fee –based system for distributing BMG’s music online.Roxio has recently relaunched Napster as subscription based music service and it has made tie up arrangements with universities for providing students subscription facility to its services on campus –wide basis. These services are legally valid and subscribers can download music from iTunes and Napster without infringement of copyright provisions.
It is reported that Napster Inc. has added 48,000 new subscribers in the third fiscal quarter of 2006, making it a total of 566,000 total paid subscribers now thereby avoiding any infringement of Copyrights Act.In Eldred V. Ashcroft, the US court openly declared that there is need for the USA to synchronize its copyright law with that of European Union council Directive 93/98/EEC of 93. This directive has authorised the EU member states to widen the copyright protection for an extra 20 years to protect the creator’s right. The general assumption that The Bono Act has said to be triumphantly harmonized United States Copyright law with that of European Union but in reality this is not being the true as USA and EU is providing different copyright terms for a considerable number of works.
For instance , in USA the protection extended for work-made-for-hire is for 95 years whereas in EU the same has been provided for 50 years . Of late , many famous sound recordings have fallen into the public domain in Europe and recording industries of USA have started to ensure stronger protection against such analogous cheaper foreign imports without consent of the creators . USA is of the view though these are fall under public domain in Europe, as these are protected under copyrights of Act of USA, any unlawful importation of these recordings still constitute an act of infringement.As regards to fair use, database protection, the work-made-for-hire agreement, the first sale doctrine, the safeguard against free downloading in digital atmosphere, there is a difference of opinion between USA and EU on enforcement of these copyrighted items.
The world’s largest recording company, Universal music filed separate lawsuits against Bolt Inc, which runs Bolt. com and Grouper Networks Inc, operator of Grouper. com. It is worth while to mention here that the Grouper was acquired by Sony Pictures Entertainment in August, 2006 for $ 65 million.As per Universal Music, film studio will be added as a defendant in these cases. The main allegation by the Universal Music group is that these companies illegally encouraged the music lovers to share the music videos and other copyrighted materials without the prior approval of the copyright owners.
Clips from movies and music videos are being downloaded from the video sites by millions of neitizens at free of cost. Google Inc. recently has acquired one of the top of such site namely ‘you tube’ for $ 1. 65 billion.
A content licensing agreement was recently concluded by the Universal music with ‘You Tube’. Universal music disclosed that its effort to conclude licensing deal with the both Bolt and Grouper was unsuccessful. In the copy right violation suit filed by the Universal music in U. S District Court in Los Angeles against Bolt and Grouper , the Universal music has alleged that defendants have flouted the copyright laws by ‘ copying , distributing , reformatting and creating ‘ works derived from songs and music videos owned by them .
Universal music is the division of French media and telecommunications company “Vivendi “. Plaintiff has pleaded to order unstipulated damages earned from any profits by the defendants or $ 150,000 per copy right work which was purportedly distributed on the websites without their prior approval. The New York based Bolt tries to defend its side by declaring that it has always observed with music companies’ instruction to remove any copyright video after the fact. We have to wait and see the outcome of these cases.
