Access-Right
Price:
$95.00 (06)Description
Copyright law has become the subject of general concerns that reach beyond the limited circles of specialists and prototypical rights-holders. The role, scope and effect of copyright mechanisms involve genuinely complex questions. Digitization trends and the legal changes that followed drew those complex matters to the center of an ongoing public debate. In Access-Right: The Future of Digital Copyright Law, Zohar Efroni explores theoretical, normative and practical aspects of premising copyright on the principle of access to works. The impetus to this approach has been the emergence of technology that many consider a threat to the intended operation, and perhaps even to the very integrity, of copyright protection in the digital setting: It is the ability to control digital works already at the stage of accessing them by means of technological protection measures.The pervasive shift toward the use of digital technology for the creation, dissemination, exploitation and consumption of copyrighted material warrants a shift also in the way we perceive the structure of copyright rules. Premising the copyright order on the concept of digital access first calls for explaining the basic components of proprietary access control over information in the abstract. The book then surveys recent developments in the positive law, while showing how the theoretical access-right construct could explain the logic behind them. Finally, the book critically analyzes existing approaches to curbing the resulting problems of imbalance and overprotection, which are said to disadvantage users. In conclusion, the book advocates for a structural overhaul of our current regulative apparatus. The proposed reform involves a series of changes in the way we define copyright entitlements, and in the way in which those entitlements may interrelate within a single, coherent scheme.
Features
- Develops unique approaches to "information" as subject matter of property regulation and to "access to information" as a possible trigger of private property mechanisms.
- Surveys the major developments in digital copyright law-making over the past two decades, while answering the questions of how we have gotten so far with copyright law and whether recent developments adhere to some ascertainable pattern or logic.
- Explains the complex legal terrain of anti-circumvention provisions. It localizes this novel species of rules within the larger picture of copyright's expansion and demonstrates its function within that trend.
- Explores the claim of overprotection and furnishes a critical analysis of current approaches that offer pointed as well as comprehensive types of solutions to the digital dilemma.
- Presents an original and thought-provoking regulative model toward a true comprehensive approach to the core problems of digital copyright law. The model demonstrates how traditional principles of private ownership and effective users' rights to access copyrighted materials could coexist within a uniform, coherent and balanced legal scheme.
Reviews
"With copyright in crisis, this courageous and ambitious work provides much-needed
scholarly analysis and insight. Zohar Efroni develops a comprehensive, theoretically solid
concept for copyright in the digital age, the access-right model (ARM). Based on a flexible
assertion principle, ARM would be restricted to works expressed digitally. It would replace
the often incomplete and accidental range of individual exclusive rights, thus opening a
convincing future for digital copyright law, without restricting the rights and interests of
legitimate users."
--PROF. ADOLF DIETZ, Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property (ret.), Munich, Germany
"How to respond to the copyright crisis? This book proposes access-based regulation for
redesigning digital copyright, and it offers a fresh perspective on the controversies regarding the future of copyright. With impressive clarity, Zohar Efroni applies the lessons of information theory and a systematic analysis of digital technology to developments in copyright law. By incorporating the notions of information flows and digital access into copyright doctrine, Efroni presents inspiring insights into the nature of copyright in the digital environment."
--NIVA ELKIN-KOREN, Dean of the University of Haifa Faculty of Law and the founding
director of the Haifa Center for Law and Technology
"[T]his book is an important contribution to the theoretical debate about the
proper role of copyright in the case of digital works and also provides opportunities
for further research regarding specific aspects of the proposed model. Moreover, its
clear and intriguing structure makes is highly interesting and also readable by a wide
audience. It should be read by copyright practitioners and scholars alike who have an
understanding of copyright law's recent developments and would like to gain further
deep insight by looking into a complete and original proposal."
--Queen Mary Journal of Intellectual Property, Vol. 1 No. 3
Reviewer: Vasiliki Samartzi, LLM (UCL), Attorney-at-law, PhD Candidate, Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London, UK
About the Author(s)
Zohar Efroni is a legal scholar and attorney specializing in intellectual property, Internet and media law. He has published extensively on the interaction between law and technology, especially in the context of property rights in intangible assets. Dr. Efroni has been a resident scholar and a scholarship holder at the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law in Munich, Germany. He is currently a nonresidential fellow at the Center for Internet and Society (Stanford Law School), where he contributes to the CIS website writing on current issues of law, technology and intellectual property. Dr. Efroni consults firms, individuals and agencies on matters of information policy, privacy and IP, both domestically and internationally. Dr. Efroni holds law degrees acquired in Israel (LL.B.) and in New York (LL.M. IP), as well as a legal Ph.D. with honors from the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich (summa cum laude). He is admitted to practice law in Israel, New York and Germany.
