Challenges of the Knowledge Society (Jun 2016)
THE DURATION OF RIGHTS CONFERRED BY COPYRIGHT
Abstract
The duration of copyright protection has been a controversial issue. And yet never completed. It was and is the key issue of copyright, the same as are those concerning the recognition of their nature and content. If the first law to protect a new creation, gave the exclusive right for the author as long as a year, today its duration is, basically the whole life of the author’s plus 70 years for the heirs. Some argue that it is unwise. Others that should not be as such at all. In reality, the copyright in the widest sense of the term of copyright for the purposes of law complex that regulates the relations between the author with his work and of the relations between the authors and others on his work, this right never ceases. As for the right created by and after recognizing and codifying copyright notice that he is trying to harmonize the interests of authors and those of the public and to make peace between the author with his audience in a more general interest, and the solution for reconciliation and / or harmonization was limiting the length of some of the attributes of copyright. A solution that makes copyright law without a right to have the benefits after a while, that every owner has of his property. Furthermore, the link between the author and his work remains eternal because none other than the author may not claim ever to be the author of and has a copyright on that work. But neither the author can claim ever to have a real ownership of the work that still belongs to him and him only. Copyright proves to be as different from any other category of rights.
