Understanding copyright and its related rights

Aleck Ncube

IT is important to explain in general terms the principles of copyright law and practice and describe the different types of rights that copyright and related rights pro­tect, as well as the limitations and exceptions to those rights. Copyright relates to literary and artistic creations, such as books, music, paint­ings and sculptures, films and technol­ogy-based works (such as computer programmes and electronic databases). 

The expression copyright refers to the act of copying an original work, which, in re­spect of literary and artistic creations, may be done only by the author or with the au­thor’s permission. 

The expression “authors’ rights” refers to the creator of an artistic work, its author, thus underlining that, as recognised in most laws, authors have certain specific rights in their creations that only they can exercise, which are often referred to as moral rights, such as the right to prevent distorted reproduc­tions of the work. Other rights, such as the right to make copies, can be exercised by third parties with the author’s permission. 

The fundamental rights protected by Copyright are; right of reproduction, distribution, rental and importation, rights of public performance, broadcasting, communication to the public and making available to the public, translation and adaptation rights. 

Rights Protected by Copyright

Copyright protects two types of rights. Economic rights allow right owners to derive financial reward from the use of their works by others. Moral rights allow authors and creators to take certain actions to preserve and protect their link with their work. 

The author or creator may be the owner of the econom­ic rights or those rights may be transferred to one or more copyright owners. Many countries do not allow the transfer of moral rights.

Economic rights 

With any kind of property, its owner may decide how it is to be used, and others can use it lawfully only if they have the owner’s permission, often through a licence. The owner’s use of the property must, however, respect the legally recognised rights and interests of other members of society. 

So, the owner of a copyright-protected work may decide how to use the work, and may prevent others from using it without permission. National laws usually grant copyright owners exclusive rights to allow third parties to use their works, subject to the legally recognised rights and interests of others.

Most copyright laws state that authors or other right owners have the right to au­thorise or prevent certain acts in relation to a work. Right owners can authorise or prohibit the following:

– Reproduction of the work in various forms, such as printed publications or sound recordings; Under this right, copyright owners have the authority to prevent others from making copies of their works without permission and is the most basic right protected by copyright legislation. 

The right to control the act of reproduction – be it the reproduction of books by a publisher or the manufacture by a record producer of compact discs containing recorded performances of musical works – is the legal basis for many forms of exploitation of protected works.

– Distribution of copies of the work; The right of reproduction would be of little economic value if copyright owners could not con­trol distribution of copies of their works made with their consent. 

The right of distribution usually terminates upon first sale or transfer of ownership of a particular physical copy. This means, for example, that when the copyright owner of a book sells or otherwise transfers ownership of a copy of the book, the owner of that copy may give the book away or even resell it without the copyright owner’s further permission. The question of applying this concept to digital files is under consideration in various national legal systems. 

λPublic performance of the work; A public performance is considered under many national laws to include any per­formance of a work at a place where the public is or can be present, or at a place not open to the public but where a substantial number of persons outside the normal circle of a family and its close acquaintances are present. 

The right of public performance entitles the author or other copyright owner to authorise live performances of a work, such as a play in a theatre or an orchestra performance of a symphony in a concert hall. Public performance also includes performance by means of a recording. Thus a musical work is considered publicly performed when a sound recording of that work, or phonogram, is played over amplification equipment, for example in a discotheque, airplane, kombi or shopping                                                mall.

-Broadcasting or other communication of the work to the public; covers the transmission for public reception of sounds, or of images and sounds, by wireless means, whether by radio, tele­vision or satellite. When a work is communicated to the public, a signal is distributed by wire or wireless means for reception only by persons who possess the equipment necessary to decode the signal. Cable transmission is an example of communication to the public.

-Translation of the work into other languages; and adaptation of the work, such as turning a novel into a screenplay. Translating or adapting a work protected by copyright also requires permission from the right owner. Translation means the expression of a work in a language other than that of the original version. 

Adaptation is generally understood as the modification of a work to create another work, for example adapting a novel to make a film, or the modification of a work for different conditions of exploitation, e.g, by adapting a textbook originally written for university students to make it suitable for a lower level.