Online Copyright Infringment And The Liability Of Internet Service Provider In Ethiopia
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Date
2016-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Everything changes in time. The only thing that remains constant, as they say, is change itself.
Time once had made protection of people’s physical property very necessary and people have
crafted laws in that regard. Now time is telling us to protect people’s digital property in the
virtual world. So we need to react for the same old reasons i.e. the notion of private property
and ownership in general and encouraging creativity in the copyright system in particular. Yes
of course digital properties unlike the physical ones does not give rise to rivalry and are non
excludable as they can be exploited at the same time by many people without the risk of
depreciation. However their free and unprotected use by many people does significantly harm
the economic interest of copyright owners. Still again we may agree that the creation of
literary and artistic works may not drain totally because digital contents are freely quenched.
However if it is not protected after a fair period/extent of silence the severe and expansive
damage will impair the interest of every copyright owner as they could not otherwise recoup
their cost of production. On top of that as the momentum of digitizing intangible properties is
accelerating to wipe out the use of tangible fixation materials like paper and surpass physical
(analogue) distribution means’s like publishing or printing of books the virtual world has be
adjusted for safe and legal digital content transactions. In another word as digital technologies
are making creativity and distribution of creative works very cheap and much easier, in the
near future, it is very probable that physical and hard labour methods of inking down and
disseminating intangible properties will be out of date. Therefore while authors chance to get
reward for their creation from traditional methods of distribution like publishing drains slowly
the digital world should be designed to provide a conducive environment that appreciates the
good old Lockean notion of property and the incentive/reward theory of intellectual property
i.e. one should be able to benefit from the fruit of his labour and when it comes to intangible
property authors should be rewarded to keep the system safe from under production. It is only
in that way the intellectual property concerns of under production and under utilization are
balanced i.e. by providing rewards to encourage further creativity and by maintaining fair use
exceptions to facilitate public utilization of creative works in the virtual world as it was and
still is the case in the real (analogue) world.
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Keywords
Copyright Infringment,Liability Of Internet Service Provider,Copyright