Committee : WIPO 1
Issue : How to fight illegal downloading of protected works (such as music, films, books, paintings, etc.) ?
Chair : Bernard Beeckman Amélie
Introduction
With the emergence of new communication technologies, such as social networks, skype or mobile devices, there appears an increase in cultural exchanges and producers of cultural contents, such as music, movies, literature, or video games, which have rapidly changed and have become more international.
Sharing content happens no longer just between friends, but on a wider scale as the internet has won in importance during the past ten years.
In 2016, for example, each minute, 701 389 users connect themselves on their Facebook account, 2,78 million Youtube videos are viewed and 2,4 million searches are made on Google. On top of this, on average 5 hours are dedicated to internet in a day per person. These numbers mark the primary role of the global computer network.
The net is full of resources and information, such as literary work, videos, scientific information… available with one click. They can be used of various reasons: educational, entertaining or professional. However, internet users don’t always respect rules and come to find themselves fulfilling illegal acts, for example, illegal downloading can lead a series of damages such as the loss of copyright, plagiarism and various frauds.
During these three days of debate, we are going to seek a response together, towards the question of illegal downloading of protected works.
Key Terms
WIPO : The World Intellectual Property Organisation (organisation in which the debates will be held), is a national organisation of United Nations, founded in 1967, made up of 188 member states.
Her mission is to promote the elaboration of an international system of intellectual protection balanced and effective, that encourages the innovation and the creativity in the interest of all.
In other words, WIPO recognizes and rewards creators and guarantees them a protection of their work. This international organ is composed of various services dealing with rights of marks, labels of origin, patents, or even national recordings of designs and models.
Intellectual property: According to the WIPO definition, the term “intellectual property” (IP) refers to creation of the mind: inventions; literary and artistic works; drawings and models; and symbols, names or images used in trade. This intellectual property involves “two parts”, industrial property, which includes inventions, trademarks, industrial drawings and models, geographical indications and copyright, which applies to literary works (such as novels, poems and plays), to films, to musical and artistic works…
IP rights allow the author to benefit from his own work, these rights are outlined in Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which insists on everyone’s right to the protection of moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author. The IP protection is essential, it emphasises the different cultures, spurs economic growth by creating new jobs. IP is protected by law, for example by means of patents, copyrights, and trademark registrations.
Copyright: Copyright is a legal term which indicates the rights of creators on their literary and musical works, paintings, sculptures, films, computer programs, advertising creations and technical drawings. Copyright protects a produced work but not its original idea. Copyright is based on two kinds of rights, the moral right, which protects author’s non-economics interests, and the property law, which allows the creator to receive a funding for his work. An author can decide by himself if his work can be reproduced, adapted, exploited or put on sale.
Downloading: The term downloading stems from “down” meaning “in a lower position” and load “fill with a large amount of something”, refers in the IT field to a data transfer from a remote server to a computer through a transmission channel, most of time internet. Information such as music, videos or images is communicated. Using a software or watching a video, for instance, requires first of all to download it, in other words to install it on a computer before being able to use it.
Illegal downloading: illegal downloading is acquiring the access through internet to artworks (music, movies…) protected by author’s rights but without any reward to them for their work. As indicated by the adjective “illegal”, this action doesn’t respect the law and leads to sanctions. Several different illegal downloading methods exist, such as the “peer to peer”, p2p: throughout a program software, the web user downloads an artwork already downloaded by other web users.
Hadopi: High Authority for the Diffusion of Artworks and the Protection of Internet rights (Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Œuvres et de la Protection des droits sur Internet). Hadopi is, like its name suggest, an institution in charge of broadcasting the artworks and protecting rights on internet. It fights against illegal downloading and implements systems against it, by trying to correct fraudster’s behavior. It aims to protect the author’s right in a pedagogic manner, by informing web users of the risks taken throughout the exercise of illegal actions. Hadopi has for mission to promote the development of the legal offer and to monitor the lawful and unlawful usage of the artworks on the Internet; to protect the artworks against the attempts of the rights that they’ve been attributed in the context of the graduated answer; to regulate the usage of protection technical measures.
Legal Offer Hadopi: Implemented by the Hadopi institution, the legal offer is a label, allowing the diffusion’s offers to promote the legal content of their offer/product. This label is materialized by a logo, stick to the products, which enables to identify it more easily. All legal cultural offers are gathered on a website offrelegal.fr, encompassing more than 300 websites of music, games, inventoried videos by the installation. Numerous websites propose this offer, payment by web, and the user allows to remunerate the authors rights. It is noted that a free website isn’t necessarily illegal but it could be financed by other ways such as advertisement. On the other hand, certain websites suggest users subscribe, but it isn’t transferred to the authors. Therefore, it is crucial to be cautious of the legality of the website, most of the legal websites contain official labels such as “PUR” or “Offre légale Hadopi”.
History
The beginnings of illegal downloading
Since the establishment of Internet in 1969 and of the World Wide Web (www) in 1989, the exchanges throughout the world have been massively facilitated with internet remarkably contributing to the rise of globalization and thus an intensification of global trades.
ICTs, information and communication technologies, enable new forms of collaboration within our society. E-communication, representing the exchange of information through a computer network, increases the amount of knowledge acquired by each person on the globe, who is aware of all the information available internationally. In addition, some practices, such as going to the library to borrow a book, are being lost. Thus, in today's world, there is no need to head to a record store to get music or DVDs, everything is found directly on the net. Through downloads, each person can therefore get more softwares, entertaining information, professional, educational …
The illegal downloading began in 1997, through the appearance of the first data sharing network, called peer-to-peer, p2p, from Napster, a tool initially dedicated to the sharing service, used today for downloading music. At that time, the software enabled the free exchange of data and was very quickly used to pirate music. In 2001, a trial took place because many users violated copyright. Napster, unable to maintain the conditions of legality imposed by the law will announce its bankruptcy. From that moment on, other softwares will be created, such as Kazaa, Pirate Bay, Megaupload, PopCorn time or Bit Torrent where it is possible to perform illegal downloads. On top of that with the improvement of technologies, it will become more and more difficult to detect these sites.
The consequences of illegal downloading in France and on a global scale
Illegal downloading has had a strong impact on global consumption. The French case illustrates this phenomenon. In 2006, President Jacques Chirac declared: "I do not accept a job to be robbed because it is technically possible, because producers earn too much money, because it is more convenient to download then to go to the Fnac.” Regarding the field of music, CD sales have fallen due to piracy and free music tracks websites. Artists are also strongly affected, since their copyrights crumble.
- Solutions are proposed: SFR, a telephone operator, offers buyers of its unlimited contracts the possibility to download for free on their mobile titles among 1 million references.
- Some stores are forced to cut their prices due to competition with the net. In 2009, 1,000 employees lost their jobs in France because of the closing down of their store.
- Regarding cinema, its attendance levels have fallen by 10 percent in 2004.
In a few numbers:
- 19% of Internet users have already downloaded on Internet for free, or 2 915 million Internet users.
- Only 4% have paid to download.
- Three quarters of fraudsters are men mostly aged 15 to 24 years old and are pupils, students.
- The download average is of 11 films per month per pirate, or nearly 32 million movie downloads per month, that is to say 1.1 million per day.
In addition to the example of France, other statistics reveal the importance of this phenomenon across the globe. Concerning video games, in January 2011, a report from BBC declared that this happening has led to a loss of 1000 jobs and £1.45 million in the United Kingdom, during the year 2012. Illegal downloads of video games has risen by 20% in the last five years. In 2009, 10 million games have been illicitly downloaded. The most affected countries, from least to most, are China, Brazil, France, Spain and Italy.
Some might see advantages in these practices: for them, illegal downloading represents better democracy and cultural openness, promoting free access by everyone. Inequalities between the rich and the poor are reduced more easily, as each individual has access to the information. The many books, movies and music that are available for free download have incited millions of people to download illegitimately. However, these actions are heavily criticized by the music and film industries, who lose a huge benefit, as they gain no money for their work through unauthorized downloads. In addition, much less people go to certain spaces, such as cinemas. In consequence, these many companies exert pressure on the state, which seeks to find a solution to this problem.
Diagram from Digital Music Study, 2010
This diagram properly illustrates that the majority of downloads are illegal (65 %). A large part of these concerns P2P.
The reactions and sanctions from countries
Following complaints, many governments, and certain international organizations, take action and establish different measures to stop fraudulent action. In France, the article 335.4, which concerns individual property, establishes:
“Is punishable by three years of prison and a 300 000€ fine, any fixation, reproduction, communication or putting to the public’s disposal, of copyrighted material, be it freely or for any payment; or any broadcasting, of a prestation, a phonogram, a videogram or a program, made, without the consent, when required, of the artist-interpreter, of the producer of phonograms or of videograms, or of the audio-visual communication company.”
In 2006, a law, issued from the French transposition of rights of the European directive, concerning author's rights; or the DADVSI law, was established. Its main objective is to set up an automatic fine for people who download, or put at disposal, files, without any authorization, on P2P networks.
In 2007, the Olivennes report was created and adopted by forty-six culture and Internet companies. It sets up punitive measures such as filtration or Internet cut-off by the operators.
Hadopi Law: adopted in 2009, based on the European Law, this law is being implemented by the Haute autorité pour la protection des œuvres et des droits sur internet (High authority for the protection of artworks and Internet rights) and creates the “PUR” label (in French, promotion des usages responsables - promoting responsible uses) to identify legal downloads. It follows a stringent scheme named “graduated response” to warn the offenders in three steps:
- A first email message is sent to the suspected offender to inform him/her to pay attention to the activities on his/her internet connection.
- A certified letter is sent to the offender if the illegal activities are not stopped.
- If the situation goes on, the subscriber could be punished under Hadopi and his/her case could be sent to the Chief Prosecutor for criminal investigation.
Since the creation of the system in 2010, 3.7 million mails were sent with only 161 cases referred to courts and a maximum fine of 800 euros to date.
Some countries are inspired by France and its laws, such as the Hadopi law: currently in the world, only South Korea has adopted the graduated response. Sweden enforces more stringent measures. New Zealand will also review the draft prepared by France, so will the United Kingdom, who intends “to send warnings to internet users and wait for their reaction to this first phase before considering potential sanctions.”
In addition, a large number of treaties and conventions were signed by WIPO, such as the Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances; the Geneva Convention for the Protection of Producers of Phonograms against Unauthorized Duplication of their Phonograms; the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled and the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT).
The most affected countries
Top 10 countries affected by the illegal downloading of protected works.
http://www.blogdumoderateur.com/rapport-la-france-9eme-au-classement-des-telechargements-illegaux/
The United States: In 2015, streaming has generated 1,87 billion of dollars against 1,85 billion of dollars for the sale of CDs, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, who defends the sector’s interests. So streaming has a higher receipt compared to the sale of CDs, but this doesn’t make the US happy, many musicians and singers think that the copyrights that the streaming sites give are not high enough.
The United Kingdom : Second country in which the most protected works are illegally downloaded, the United Kingdom took some strict measures in 2010. The providers of internet access have to send a message to warn their “furtive followers”.
Italy : this country gets third place with regards to the illegal file traffic. In 2015, the justice court of Rome decrees the blockade of 24 sites in Italy because they favoured the sharing of illegal copies of movies.
With regards to the countries affected by illegal downloading, there are two different aspects to take into account:
First there are countries with an very high illegal download rate, like the map above shows. These countries generally are the most developed, and have an access to comfortable technologies and modern devices. The downloading is done mostly for the comfort of individuals, as the population searches to speed up the modes to reach certain products, even in an illegal manner, even though strong regulations are set up by the state.
Secondly, the least developed countries are also affected by the illegal downloading of works, because these don’t have the financial, technological and personal resources needed to fight against the frauds.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for example, the authors of cultural pieces suffer because of the non-application of the rights protecting the copyrights and their works. They are victims of piracy of all sorts, especially in the reproduction and interpretation of the works without the agreement from the author. Because of a erroneous politic protection for art pieces and a society that is incapable to assure the copyrights, the artists often have an evil to get their rights in the least developed countries.
Therefore during the debates ascribe strong attention to the countries in which the copyrights aren’t respected taking into account their weak economical means and political security.
Possible solutions
In order to respond to the question “how to fight illegal downloading of protected works (such as music, films, books, paintings, etc.)?” we would like to draw the delegates attention on the following points :
- The delegates will be able to take inspiration from the Hadopi law and from the graduated answer put in place.
- They will need to be aware of the few useful rules to use to fight a malware program, such as the downloading of known programs, “open source”; the updating of his personal informations…
- In order to show the severity and the non-compliance of works and their authors, during an illegal download, they will be able according to their country, to consider stronger sanctions.
- The creation of new international labels is also an effective solution.
- The delegates will have to be conscious of the cultural access importance, and of the world wide disparities in this realm. They will have to try to decrease these, by giving more chances to disadvantaged people (social assistance...), creating awareness days to cultural access, decreasing the registration costs for some activities…
- In order to avoid the downloading, more websites could be created in which the population pay low daily subscription.
- Awareness campaigns can be performed to every age category in particular to the 14-25 years old in order to establish a realisation to the internet users. By trying among others to make them conscious of their duties as citizen, but also as responsible residents of the planet.
- The increasing of the DMRS (Digital Right Management Systems) use, the numerical systems allowing to distribute works online according to inspected uses.
- The free put at disposal of works with the consent of their authors “the free access”, some licences like the “Creative Commons” allow authors to get a contractual legal framework additional to copyright in order to allow them to share their works without loosing control.
- To find new services capable of detecting pirating sites.
This diagram shows the reasons for which legal and illegal internet users would stop illegal downloading.
https://cdn2.nextinpact.com/images/bd/news/77053-demos-telechargement-musique-illegal-raisons.jpg
- The delegates can inspire themselves from the document previously supplied in order to seek reasons why internet users would stop the illegal downloading. By noticing, for example that what make them stop their illicit behavior is the possibility to get a fine (73%), or also the reduction of the internet use, the arriving of new free downloading sites...
Conclusion
Illegal downloading appeared in the 2000s and is a problem we must constantly face in order to find an efficient counter method. These illegal acts, carried out every minute by millions of people in the world, must be stopped. Access to culture is permitted, thanks to these against-the-law means, but copyrights of international human rights are no longer respected. The delegates must find solutions in order to allow a larger access to culture, while respecting creator’s rights. In the twenty first century, technologies keep advancing and in many countries, each family owns today a tablet, a computer. The use of internet has become essential, as said Craig Barrett, ex-director of Intel : “ Internet will be to the economy of the 21rst century, what it was to the essence of the 20th. The power of computers is the essence of internet.”
Bibliography
http://www.wipo.int/copyright/fr/
http://vuedegauche.canalblog.com/archives/2006/04/04/4562409.html
https://www.service-public.fr/professionnels-entreprises/vosdroits/F23431
https://www.hadopi.fr/usages-responsables/nouvelles-libertes-nouvelles-responsabilites
http://www.kysban.fr/blog/post/2009/03/11/13-solutions-de-telechargement-illegal-oubliees-par-HADOPI