Copyright Laws

Colombia Upgrades it’s Copyright Law

By Maria Sol Porro

After arduous debates in the legislature and the public sphere, Law 1915 was enacted in Colombia in July.  This also means Law 23 of 1982 is modified and new provisions are established in the area of copyright and related rights.

The law had a very controversial debate process, taking six years of discussions with working groups from organizations that defend digital rights, rights of people with visual disabilities, library advocates and journalists.

This project, in principle, responded to the need of Colombia to comply with some commitments acquired by the country in the framework of the Free Trade Agreement with the United States, in force since May 15, 2012.

According to the National Directorate of Colombian Law, the main changes that Law 1915 establishes include

• Specifies the scope of some author and related patrimonial rights with respect to the digital rights.
• Extends the term of protection when the rights are headed by legal persons.
• Expands the range of limitations and exceptions to copyright and related rights, reaffirming Colombia as the owner of one of the broadest ranges in these issues.
• Regulates the use of orphan works, placing Colombia as the pioneer in this type of regulation.
• Establishes provisions with respect to technological protection measures.
• Updates observance of rights regarding provisions.

However, the new law did not incorporate certain current issues, for example, the exceptions to the responsibility of internet service providers for infractions of copyright or related rights (CHECK – a point that is part of both FTA signed with the United States and agreement signed with the European Union).

These absences do not obscure the fact that this reform is an important novelty for copyright in Colombia since it is a fundamental reform of the aforementioned right, and not a formal amendment. The focus is to modernize different aspects rrelated toColombian authors and creative industries and their correlative relationship with foreign colleagues.

Source: https://www.zapatarios.com/

Hotels put the Copyright law of Argentina under pressure

By Maria Sol Porro

As a result of an investigation by the National Commission for the Defense of Competition (CNDC), the Ministry of Commerce fined the Argentine Society of Authors and Composers of Music (Sadaic) for US $ 1,567,945. The survey determined that Sadaic charged “excessive prices” on copyright fees paid by hotels and other establishments for music reproduction in hotels guest rooms.

To determine this fine, the CNDC made an international comparison of the tariffs paid for the reproduction of musical works and the result of the investigation determined that in Argentina hotels and other establishments pay between six and nine times more than the average of the reference countries.

These fees imply a fee payment for copyright for playing music in hotels. With the calculation methodology used by Sadaic, each hotel must pay the fee for having televisions in the rooms, regardless of whether the room was occupied or not and if musical works were even used.

“This measure implies an improvement in the competitiveness of the tourism sector and enables the reduction of tariffs for rights of authors and composers charged for the secondary reproduction of TV and music content in hotels,” according to the president of the CNDC.

Finally, the CNDC recommended to the Executive Branch  that the tariff fixing system be restructured based on a criteria of “reasonableness, non-discrimination, transparency, fairness and limited scope.” The  CNDC suggested that the collection management system must be modernized in order to expand users and reduce tariffs, “without substantially affecting income.”

SOURCE: http://www.ambito.com/927656-multan-a-sadaic-por-mas-de-42-millones-por-cobrar-precios-excesivos-en-los-aranceles-a-hoteles

What Is “Fair Use” of a Copyrighted Work

Copyright laws protect the author of a creative work, setting out the rights of the owner, as well as the responsibilities of other people who want to use the work. The most notable exception to those rights, the so-called Fair Use, has received substantially different degrees of protection under different legal systems.

What is Fair Use?

Fair use is a use of a copyrighted work that can be done without permission from the copyright owner. If your use of a work qualifies as a fair use, then it would not be considered an illegal infringement.

Different legal systems have developed different theories on what constitutes Fair Use and must be warranted a certain degree of legal protection.

Fair use in Brazil and Argentina

Although they never mention the concept of “Fair use”, the Brazilian copyright law (National Act No. 9.610 of 1998, article 46) and the Brazilian software law (National Act No. 9.609 of 1998, article 6) discipline some exceptions to general copyright rules. They provide, in fact, quite specific cases of protected fair use, most of them related to the non-commercial, artistic or cultural use.

Reproducing some of the work if you need to comment on it or critique it, for instance, is considered Fair Use under Brazilian law. Thus, reproducing a work in press, mentioning the author, or quoting it in books and commentaries does not infringe the author’s copyright. Reproduction for private uses is also considered Fair Use: so it’s fair use to reproduce short extracts from a work for the private use of the copier, or reproducing “stage and musical performance if carried out in the family circle, or for exclusively teaching purposes in educational establishments, and if devoid of any profit-making purpose”.

Argentina, quite similarly, does not expressly mention the principle of Fair Use in its Copyright Law, Law No. 11.723 of September 28, 1933, but still provides for substantial copyright exceptions.

Section 10 provides that any person may publish, for didactic or scientific purposes comments, criticisms or notes referring to intellectual works.

It provides, furthermore, permitted use of political speeches, literary discourses, conferences on intellectual subjects, and parliamentary speeches for journalistic information (Section 27); the permitted use of literary or artistic works in public acts organized by educational institutions (Section 36); and finally the permitted use of pieces of music in concerts, auditions and public performances by musical organizations belonging to State institutions (Section 36).

Fair use in the digital world

How is the concept of Fair Use evolving in the shifting legal panorama of an ever changing digital world? Digital platforms like YouTube or Vimeo see thousands of users uploading materials that make use of copyrighted music and videos, that, to some extent, would deserve protection under the Fair Use doctrine. For instance, the case of a YouTube video portraying a girl dancing on the notes of a famous Prince’s song on the stereo received a takedown notice by Universal Music and it was deemed to deserve protection under US law in a recent case (Lenz vs. Universal Music Corp.), where the Courts adopted a quite wide notion of Fair Use. This would have been impossible in Brazil or Argentina, where the cases of Fair use constitute a restricted list and are predetermined by the law.

It must be said, however, that in 2010, Brazil amended the law No 9.610/1998 introducing a new article 107 that provides a quite innovative case of Fair Use. Some CDs or DVDs have a digital right managements system (DRM) in place, which is basically a digital lock that prevents users from making illegal copies of that disc. Article 107 states that it is not illegal to circumvent digital locks if these hinder or prevent the uses allowed by arts. 46, 47 and 48 of the Brazilian Copyright Act, which, as we saw, provides some cases of fair use. In other words, breaking digital locks does not constitutes copyright infringement if it’s for fair use.