0.2 The scope of copyright law  (Page 9/10)

Some of these extensions arguably stimulate additional creativity by incentivizing it. However, the extension of copyright to more kinds of works and for a greater length of time has resulted in the reduction of the amount of material in the public domain. As a result, materials that otherwise could have been used in the creation of new artistic or literary works can no longer be used.

As copyright law has expanded it has also fragmented. In other words, special rules have been devised to deal with particular kinds of works. Some of those special rules are described below.

Audiovisual/cinematographic works

Audiovisual or cinematographic works are collective projects that often involve the contributions of several individual authors. Given the large number of people that are involved in their creation, treating each contributor as a joint author of the work would give rise to practical problems. For instance, each contributor would be free to license use of the work to anyone they chose, potentially resulting in use of the work in a manner that other contributors found objectionable.

Different countries have tried to overcome this problem in different ways. The French Intellectual Property Code treats contributors to films as co-authors but includes in the author-producer relationship a transfer of the exploitation rights of the material to the producer. Countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States, by contrast, vest the authorship and copyright ownership of these works in a single person or organization. For instance, the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patent Act in the United Kingdom typically vests exploitation rights in the producer. By contrast, as was suggested above, the U.S. Copyright Act treats the contributions to a audiovisual or cinematographic work as works for hire, thereby vesting authorship and copyright ownership in one entity, again typically the producer. The Berne Convention recognizes and respects the differences among countries in the allocation of rights in audiovisual and cinematographic works. This phenomenon is described further in the Rights Ownership and Works for Hire topic in  Module 4: Rights, Exceptions, and Limitations .

Computer programs

Computer programs constitute another special category of works. Although the Berne Convention does not address computer programs, the TRIPS Agreement requires WTO member countries to protect computer programs as literary works. Like audiovisual works, computer programs are often the products of the efforts of many individuals. Here too, countries vary in the way they handle allocation of authorship rights. German copyright law, for example, contains a presumption giving exclusive rights in computer software to the employer.

Broadcast, recording, interpretation

The Berne Convention requires that the author of a copyrighted work be given the exclusive right to authorize

• the broadcasting of her work or its communication to the public by any means of wireless diffusion of signs, sounds or images;
• further communication to the public by wire or by rebroadcasting of the original broadcast of the work, when this communication is made by an organization other than the original broadcaster;
• the public communication by loudspeaker or any other analogous instrument transmitting, by signs, sounds or images, the broadcast of the work.