Julianna Yau’s blog

The administration of copyright is where we get into very contentious waters. This is the manifestation of the concept of the right to copy, the Copyright Act, and the protection of remuneration to creators for copies. Naturally, the administration of copyright is currently causing massive headaches for everyone involved because the factors on which it relies still need refinement and consensus.

As it stands, copyright administration intends to protect the right to copy and, peculiarly, other creators’ rights such as moral rights. Law suits where copyright is improperly being used to protect moral rights (whether a petty claim or not) often cause people to cry “foul!”. IMO, this is a result of different creators’ rights being lumped under copyright, rather than working alongside it.

Conceptually, the administration of copyright would only address the right to copy. This administration would naturally have to work very closely with the administration of other creators’ rights, such as moral rights, and other sources of income for creators, such as payment for exhibitions, lectures, performances, etc.

From what I’ve seen, the administration of copyright involves many parts for which there is increasing disagreement on how things should work:

1. Business models – how the distribution (authorized & unauthorized) of copies is part of the marketing strategy and income base.
2. Administrative bodies – how different bodies, such as copyright collectives and producers, operate; issues with these are primarily a combination of communicative and financial accessibility.
3. Creator participation – groups such as the CMCC are indicative of the fact that creators are increasingly disagreeing with how their copyright is being administered by administrative bodies (in the case of the members of the CMCC, the administrative bodies are their record labels).
4. User participation – end-users and professional creators are now, more than ever, having more technical access to works and desire to creatively reuse primary works; however, they are often at odds with the preceding items for various reasons (to be discussed in more detail later).

Are there other major aspects of the administration of copyright which I missed? Remember that at this point I’m just sorting and defining, and the in-depth discussion will come later.