An Experiment In Deconstructing Copyright – Part 9 – User Rights
Concepts of user rights are difficult to discuss without it ending in a shouting match because they cross over so many different copyright and non-copyright related issues. The biggest threat of user rights is that they often directly challenge creators’ rights:
- creative reuse – challenges concepts of creativity, authorship, moral rights, copyrights
- parody – challenges concepts of authorship and moral rights
- private, personal copying – challenges concepts of copyright and business models
- right to resell – I would actually like to explore this later in contrast to the concept of first sale rights and the implications of these concepts when works are available in digital formats
I debated myself on whether “making available” should be part of the list of user rights. Personally, I see that as something which should be licensed/contracted by a creator and not legislated…but I am also trying to deal with these concepts outside of legislation as much as possible so that I can deal with the issues rather than the politics. After some initial thought, I decided that I would like to start by putting the concept of “making available” as a creator’s right and later explore the overall option of creators offering different rights to users. We’ll see how well that works when I delve into that level of this exercise.
And what about consumer rights, like those surrounding the issues surrounding vendor choice, etc, impacted by the whole mess of TPM/DRM? For now, I am going to leave that as a floater issue which has been manifested by the concepts of copyright and how it is being administered, and not one of copyright itself. I am, however, interested in exploring issues of accessibility of works (pre- and post-digital-world) in relation to user rights.
I’m not able to think of anything else to add to the list of user rights (in terms of copyright) at this point, and am feeling that I’ve allowed my thinking to be restricted by what’s currently in the Copyright Act. If anyone can think of other user rights on the copyright front, please let me know.
Tags: copyright, user rights
