d national treatment. Berne Union members adhering to the earlier texts are not required to ratify later acts, but the latest text is the only one available to new members. For example, Britain joined the Berne Convention on December 5, 1887. It was required to ratify the first Berne Act. The U.S. joined the Berne Convention on March 1, 1989, it is required to subscribe to the latest Paris Act of 1971. Nevertheless, members of the Berne Union form a single cohesive whole. Linked together with other members of this separative cooperative unit, new members are obligated to give convention protection to other members of the union who have adhered to earlier texts. By the same token, members adhering to earlier texts have Berne Convention obligations to protect those who adhered to later acts. Now with 38 articles, one appendix and a protocol, the Berne Convention has three general types of provisions: (1)specific rules that establish rights for authors and proprietors that should be provided for in national laws, either by legislation or direct application, depending on the country's legal system; (2) more general rules that also obligate member countries to adopt national laws consistent with the minimum standards; and (3) optional rights whose adoption is left entirely to the discretion of member countries. As of October 31, 1994, the Berne Convention has 108 member countries (See Appendix 1). All member countries agree that a copyright is protected in the following ways: a. No formalities No formalities, such as notice or registration, are required for copyright protection. In other words, simultaneous publication in a Berne country eliminates the need for such formality as a prerequisite for protection in all Berne countries. However some countries offer greater copyright protection if a copyright is registered or carries a notice. For instance, in Japan and Canada, registration provides a means of making your work a public record and may thus be helpful in case of an infringement action (Fishman, 1992). b. Minimal protection laws Each member country must offer a minimum standard of copyright protection within its own borders. This protection must include: * Copyright duration of at least the author's life plus 50 years. * The granting of "moral right" to the author. Moral rights are generally defined as those rights an author can never transfer to a third party because they are considered an "extension of his or her being." Briefly, moral rights consist of the right to claim authorship, to disclaim authorship of copies, to prevent or call back distribution under certain conditions, and to object to any distortion. Moral rights are generally of most concern to visual artists (Netscape2, 1995). An example of a "moral right" is the right to prevent colorization of black and white films (Fishman, 1992). * Some provision allowing for the "fair" or "free use" of the copyrighted work. This includes materials used in quotations for educational purposes and for reporting current events (Fishman, 1992). 2. The Universal Copyright Convention (The UCC) The Universal Copyright Convention was set up in Geneva in 1957 to bring the United States and countries in Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa into an international convention to govern the copyrighting of literacy, scientific and artistic works (Jussawala, 1992). The UCC was revised only once in Paris in 1971. Similarly, the UCC also requires reciprocal rights of nationals of a member country in all other member countries, but provides that national laws relating to formalities must be complied with. So far, the 92 member countries of the UCC have agreed that a copyright is protected in the following ways: a. National treatment An author from a UCC member country is entitled to copyright protection in every country which signed the UCC. The protection the author receives under the UCC is the same as each UCC signatory country affords its own nationals, as long as that protection meets certain UCC minimum standards. This basic reciprocity under the UCC is referred to as "national treatment." Suppose John, a U.S. citizen, publishes a book in Japan, also a signatory to the UCC. John would be protected in Japan on the same basis as Japanese nationals because John is a U.S. citizen and Japan is a signatory to the treaty (Netscape2, 1995). b. First publication in a UCC country Under the UCC, if a work is first published in a UCC country, it is also entitled to protection in every other UCC country. This means that an author who is not a national of a UCC country can still obtain full UCC protection simply by first publishing in a signatory nation. For example, Muhammad is a national of Iran, which is not a UCC country. If he first published his work in Pakistan, which is a UCC country, Muhammad would be protected not only in Pakistan but in every other signatory of the UCC (Netscape2, 1995). c. Limitation on formalities The UCC requires that every UCC country accept several uniform minimum copyright standards. Thus, when it comes to copyright notice, the notice rules of all member countries are considered satisfied if the specific UCC-approved notice is placed on each copy of the work, which consists of c in a circle, the name of the author and the date of the first publication. d. Scope of protection under the UCC Under the UCC, each UCC country must (1) offer copyright protection for at least the life of the author plus 25 years; and (2) offer the author exclusive rights to translate it, with the exception that if a work is imported to another UCC country and not translated within seven years of the work's original publication, the government of that country has the right to make a translation in that country's language, but the government has to pay the author a fair fee (Netscape2, 1995). IV. THE BERNE CONVENTION AND THE UCC: A COMPARISON The Berne Convention and the UCC, working independently to deal with international copyright protection, have

上一页  [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]  下一页