Access-Right and Copyright - [Presentation Slides]

Abstract

Slides of a presentation at Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property in Munich describing a work project on copyright law in the digital environment. Slides introduce the underlying inquiry and frame the issues as descriptive and prescriptive questions concerning proprietary access control under copyright. Three fundamental concepts stand at the basis of such questions, namely, access, property and information. These concepts receive some elaboration in the context of access-to-information problems. The presentation next elaborates on the concept of the "access-right" and offers a formal definition. It then attempts to identify aspects and elements of the access-right as manifested in "traditional" copyright law and compares it to new manifestation of the access-right in current "digital" copyright law. I address overprotection concerns related to the formal (de jure) and actual (de facto) expansion of the exclusive rights and briefly touch upon three categories of solutions and approached: copyright neo-conservatism, copyright reformism and finally, an access-right approach to the problems of copyright law and policy in the digital age.