World Copyright (and Book) Day
The World Book and Copyright Day is an annual celebration organized on the 23rd of April. Its originator is UNESCO, and the date itself is symbolic, as two prominent writers died on that day: William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes.
We will focus on the second part of the name of today’s holiday, i.e. the issue of copyright in Polish Law. For the record, it is worth pointing out that in Poland the issue of copyright is regulated by the Act of February 4, 1994. on copyright and related rights. However, some issues are already regulated at the level of EU law – e.g. in Directive 2001/29 / EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of May 22, 2001.
In this article, we will present two interesting issues that probably all of us have encountered in some way.
Ghostwriter – who is he and is he really “okay”?
The first unusual issue that comes to mind when combining the phrases “book”
and “copyright” is there ghostwriting (and more broadly also ghostpainting and ghostcomposing ). This phenomenon does not have a uniform definition in Polish law, but it can be assumed that it is an activity (or a series of activities) that consists in creating a work for the contracting authority, which work will then be disseminated under the name of the contracting authority, not the actual creator.
Thus, the writer-ghost creates a work whose “author” will be officially a third person – the one who commissioned the work.
From the copyright perspective, however, this kind of relationship is definitely more problems than benefits. In order to go to the individual “ailments” that the conclusion of such a contract may cause, it is worth pointing out that in the light of the law in force in Poland, it is impossible to effectively waive non-pecuniary copyrights, and this is the right of the authorship of a work. If we want to do it with any contract, it will be invalid.
Even with such attention, we can say that the foreground is the responsibility for the crime penalized in Art. 115 sec. 1 of the Copyright Act, or plagiarism for short. At this point it is worth adding that the person commissioning the work to aghostwriter always commits plagiarism, because he either appropriates the authorship of the work or misleads as to its actual authorship.
Following the path of a plagiarized work, one may encounter at least two provisions of the Criminal Code that may apply if the contracting authority uses such a work. The first is Art. 272 of the Penal Code, which identifies the crime of extortion of false certification – it will occur, for example, when the awarding entity submits ghostwriter a diploma thesis to obtain a diploma or other academic title. Right next to it is Art. 273 of the Penal Code, which penalizes the use of a forged document (the one from 272 of the Penal Code), i.e. a diploma issued on the basis of a diploma thesis written by someone.
While the responsibility of the contracting authority does not raise any doubts, it turns out that he is alone ghostwriter may also be subordinate to it. Starting from joint responsibility (as an accomplice or helper) in plagiarism by the orderer, to the crime of fraud (286 PC), when the ghost writer himself commits plagiarism by creating a work for the orderer (and thus he will deceive him, because he will pretend to be the author of the ordered work, no being him).
Fair personal use – that is, sharing an account not always and not with everyone.
Recently, numerous websites and internet forums have reported that a well-known international video-on-demand (VOD) portal has started to randomly verify whether people using one account on this portal actually have any relationship with the person to whom this account belongs. The verification took place and takes place by rewriting the code received in the SMS or clicking on the link sent to the e-mail of the account owner.
The new activities of the website (which – by the way – previously did not take any steps to limit the sharing of user accounts) arouse a discussion about what is permitted personal use under Polish copyright law, and whether – and if so on what terms – buyers of works can share them with others.
To answer this issue, please refer to Art. 23 of the Copyright Act, which in sec. 2 indicates that, to the same extent as personal use, you can use single copies of works by a group of people who are in a personal relationship with each other – especially kinship, affinity or social relationship.
As it can be easily seen, the legislator explicitly allowed that persons remaining in permanent (permanent) relationships with each other, which we could say are quite permanent, may use one copy of the work without infringing copyright. It is a desirable and logically justified solution. It is also reflected in practice – it is hard to expect that a sister who wants to read a book that her brother bought will have to purchase a second copy, since she can “borrow it” from the next room.
However, this would not be a problem if the co-use of works covered by copyright was limited in life only to relatives, related persons or persons remaining in another lasting relationship (e.g. roommates renting one apartment).
You can often find offers of access to the VOD portal indicated in the introduction, other streaming platforms or even an application that provides computer games on various advertising and auction portals. The factor attracting buyers is undoubtedly the price – usually much lower than the market price.
Unfortunately – by purchasing access from this type of offer, the condition that the co-users of the account will remain in a lasting relationship with each other will practically never be met – you can even be sure that the users of these accounts are unknown to each other and will never meet. Thus, it should be considered that this infringes the copyrights of the authors of the work that they jointly use, because the limits of permitted personal use are exceeded by making the work available to an unidentified and potentially unlimited number of people.
As you can see, we deal with copyright issues every day, often without even thinking about it. Certain behaviors, even relatively popular or socially acceptable ones, may turn out to be a violation of someone’s copyright. It is worth bearing this in mind.