Online Copyright Infringment and the Liability of Internet Service Provider in Ethiopia

Tibebe, Solomon (2016) Online Copyright Infringment and the Liability of Internet Service Provider in Ethiopia. Masters thesis, Addis Ababa University.

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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is very probable that physical and hard labour methods of inking down and disseminating intangible properties will be out of date.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.

Item Type: Thesis (Masters)
Subjects: K Law > K Law (General)
Divisions: Africana
Depositing User: Emmanuel Ndorimana
Date Deposited: 26 Jun 2018 08:23
Last Modified: 26 Jun 2018 08:23
URI: http://thesisbank.jhia.ac.ke/id/eprint/4577

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