CopyrightX: Jamaica 2013
Course Description
The Jamaican section of this EdX Copyright course endeavors to bring together Jamaican jurists, lawyers, policy makers, and stakeholders from the creative industries to achieve a deeper understanding of the relevance and potential of copyright for Jamaica. Participation will be limited to 10-15 participants to facilitate an in-depth and engaged in-person discussion each week.
The course will be offered over 12 weeks beginning the week of January 28th. The recorded lecture will be available to watch at your convenience online beginning on Tuesday of each week (this will be the same lecture as viewed by HLS students enrolled in the Copyright course). There will also be six "special events" over the course of the semester (guest lectures and panels on Copyright topics) - these will be live streamed on the Internet on certain Wednesdays at 7pm.
There will then be a set of assigned readings each week to prepare for our local discussion section. These are linked below, you can access them by clicking on the topic for a given week.
Our discussion section will meet on Saturday mornings at NMLS in Room 5.
The course is taught by Professor William (Terry) Fisher, the Wilmer Hale Professor of Intellectual Property Law at Harvard Law School, and Director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Our local section will be led by Sarah Hsia Hall, a 2003 graduate of Harvard Law School and Intellectual Property and Entertainment attorney (admitted in NY), with participation from Professor Charles Nesson, Weld Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
At the end of the course, participants will be asked to complete a brief assignment, the purpose of which is not to test your retention of the material covered, but rather to apply concepts prospectively, to address the issue of the role Copyright can and should play for Jamaica. You will then receive a certificate confirming your participation and successful completion of the course.
Introduction to CopyrightX Materials
This set of materials is designed to provide readers an introduction to the main principles and characteristics of copyright law. It is not a treatise; readers looking for a comprehensive and detailed examination of the copyright system should instead consult the sources listed at the bottom of this page.
The materials are designed to accompany CopyrightX, a free online course taught by William Fisher under the auspices of HarvardX. The materials are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. The public at large is encouraged to use, distribute, translate, modify, and build upon these materials, provided that William Fisher and HarvardX are given appropriate credit.
Disclaimer
These materials do not offer legal advice. They provide general information concerning the principles that underlie the copyright system and indicate how various concrete problems are resolved in most countries. They cannot, however, provide reliable guidance concerning how a court in a specific country would respond to a specific set of facts. Thus, if you find yourself coming close to any of the legal boundaries described herein, you should consult a lawyer in your own jurisdiction.
Help Us Improve the Materials
We hope to update and refine these materials periodically. To do so, we need help from users. Please let us know if a piece of information contained in a module is incorrect or out of date. If you have suggestions concerning either the content of the modules or the way in which the content is presented, we are eager to hear them. You can make these suggestions in either of two ways. First, if you would like your suggestion to be available to the public, please click on the "Discussion" tab at the top of the page to which your suggestion is relevant. Second, you can simply email us at sarahhsia at gmail dot com.
Lectures [Copyright Lectures]
Course Materials:
- Week 1: The_International_Framework_of_Copyright_Law-JA and The_Requirements_for_Copyright_Protection-JA
- Week 2: Fairness_and_Personality_Theories-JA
- Week 3: The_Subject_Matter_of_Copyright-JA
- Week 4: Welfare Theory-JA (try to read at least pp. 1-4, 16-32 and 41-42)
- Week 5: Authorship-JA
- Week 6: Copyright_Machinery
- Week 7: The Rights to Reproduce and Modify - Copyright_Entitlements
- Week 8: The Rights to Distribute, Perform and Display
- Week 9: Fair Use and Misuse - Copyright_Exceptions_and_Limitations
- Week 10: Cultural Theory - Traditional_Knowledge Moral_Rights
- Week 11: Supplements to Copyright: Secondary Liability and Para-copyright - Copyright_Supplements
- Week 12: Remedies - Copyright_Litigation
- Glossary
Additional resources
The two leading treatises on copyright law in the United States are Nimmer on Copyright and Goldstein on Copyright.
A thorough discussion of international copyright law may be found in Paul Edward Geller, ed., International Copyright Law and Practice (2 volumes, Matthew Bender), although its coverage of developing and transitional countries is thin. Other useful paper treatises include Paul Goldstein, International Copyright: Principles, Law, and Practice (Oxford University Press) and Silke von Lewinski, International Copyright Law and Policy (Oxford University Press 2008).
An excellent compendium of the copyright laws in over 100 countries has been assembled by UNESCO: Collection of National Copyright Laws.
The Research Center for the Legal System of Intellectual Property (RCLIP), in cooperation with the Center for Advanced Study & Research on Intellectual Property (CASRIP) of the University of Washington School of Law, is building a comprehensive database of court decisions involving intellectual property (including copyright law) in every country throughout the world. The database is not yet complete but already constitutes a highly valuable research tool, particularly for Asian countries.
A much shorter discussion of how the scope of copyright law has increased over time may be found in William Fisher, "Geistiges Eigentum - ein ausufernder Rechtsbereich: Die Geschichte des Ideenschutzes in den Vereinigten Staaten," in Eigentum im internationalen Vergleich (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), 265-91 (English version available as: The Growth of Intellectual Property: A History of the Ownership of Ideas in the United States).
A more recent and more extended discussion of the same topic is James Boyle, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind)) (Yale University Press 2008) (available for free online).
The best commentary on copyright law in general and its scope in particular remains a book published in 1967 by Benjamin Kaplan: An Unhurried View of Copyright. Sadly, it is only available in print.
A comprehensive discussion of the aspects of copyright law that affect librarians -- and, in particular, librarians in developing countries -- may be found in the eIFL Handbook on Copyright and Related Issues for Libraries.
A short debate between Professors William Fisher and Justin Hughes((.link_red)), organized in May 2009 by the Economist magazine, examines the merits and demerits of the copyright system.
A map, prepared by William Fisher, describing the main features of copyright law in the United States and, to a limited extent, other countries, is available here.