Currently, the digital environment not only opens up opportunities for creativity but also creates loopholes in protecting the rights of authors. From music, literature to works of art, everything can be digitized and spread in the blink of an eye. However, this ease makes determining ownership and protecting works more complicated than ever. The article “Copyright protection in the digital environment” by VCD below will help you.
1. Overview of the digital environment
Digital technology is understood as the process related to the representation, processing, storage and transmission of information using numbers or similar symbols. Computers, mobile phones and electronic devices all use a system called binary to process information.
The digital environment is an integrated media environment where digital devices communicate, manage content and operate. Currently, the digital environment has become popular and pervasive in all areas of human life from economics, politics, culture, society, etc.
In the digital environment, copyright is still considered for protection along with its original characteristics. Although expressed in the form of digital coding, copyright still only protects the form, not the content, and the right to protection is established as soon as the work is formed. Unlike media works that can be easily recognized based on common senses, when a work is put into the digital environment, it will only include a set of strings of 0s and 1s and there is no distinction in the type of work until it is decoded properly.
2. Characteristics of copyright protection in the digital environment
First, copyright protection is protection for the author. The basis for copyright protection must initially come from the author’s own element, or in other words, the law stipulates and protects specific legal rights for the work so that the author can truly enjoy the material and spiritual benefits obtained from the work, thereby protecting copyright.
Second, copyright protection is automatic. Only after works in the digital environment are formed in a certain distinguishable form, will the author, the copyright owner, naturally enjoy the copyright rights for that work, and at the same time, these rights are recognized and protected by law.
Third, copyright protection is territorial. The development of the digital environment has made it difficult to determine the national territorial boundaries, so most countries have considered the nature of the infringement no longer based on the place where the infringement occurs but on the object to which the infringement is directed. The considered act is also considered to occur in the home country if the act occurs in the telecommunications environment and the internet where consumers or exploiters and users of digital information content are in that country.
Fourthly, the protected objects in the digital environment are specific works that are encoded or directly created based on digital devices. These types of digital works help authors to distribute to users in large quantities, at low cost, … Digital works can reach users quickly and easily because they have characteristics such as being compact, easy to reproduce, stored and exchanged through digital devices.
3. Subjects of copyright protection in the digital environment
The emergence of the digital environment allows authors to express, store, and transmit their works in certain material forms such as books, newspapers, paintings, photos, etc., or through the form of digitizing the work.
Subjects of copyright protection in the digital environment are understood as works, but those works are expressed in digital data with some forms of transmitting the work and specific protection methods. Therefore, subjects of copyright protection in the digital environment can be considered based on three areas: literary, artistic and scientific works.
The current Vietnamese Intellectual Property Law has also included computer programs and data sets in the protected subjects similar to the provisions of Articles 4 and 5 of the WCT Treaty. However, it can be seen that the provisions of Vietnamese law only list the general types of existence of works without any specific provisions for cases where works exist in the form of digital data.
However, it can be understood that the subject of copyright protection in the digital environment is works that are digitized or exist in the form of electronic data and are used to express through electronic devices such as computers, phones, projectors, etc. Accordingly, literary works, scientific works, textbooks, teaching materials, entertainment works, musical works can be digitized works or for theatrical and cinematic works that need to be recorded, recorded to be able to be used in the digital environment.
Above is the article “Copyright protection in the digital environment” that VCD sent to you. We hope this article is useful to you.
