Public Views on Wrongfulness of Copyright Infringements

2018 Fiscal Year Research-status Report

• Project/Area Number: 18K01380
• Research Institution: Hokkaido University
• Principal Investigator: HAZUCHA B 北海道大学, 法学研究科, 准教授 (30452808)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-04-01 – 2023-03-31
• Keywords: copyright / infringement / wrongfulness / 3D trademark / survey

Outline of Annual Research Achievements

In order to identify the legislators’, courts’ and scholars’ views on (a) human behaviour, (b) its regulation by law, and (c) the importance of individual factors and conditions affecting the expressiveness of copyright law against millions of individual copyright users, the recent copyright policy discussions, courts’ rulings and solutions proposed by individual scholars in the studied jurisdictions (i.e. US, France, Germany and Japan) were examined. Accordingly, the arguments used in favour of, and against, dealing with non-commercial uses of copyrighted works conducted by the public as copyright infringements were scrutinized. Amongst others, the following arguments were scrutinized: (a) the arguments used in civil cases against individual internet users using peer-to-peer networks for sharing files containing copyright infringing copies of copyrighted works in studied countries; (b) the argument used in granting orders against the internet service providers, which required them to block certain websites or to disclose identity of the users of certain IP addresses. This will allow to design questionnaires for collecting the general public's views on wrongfulness of such activities in later stages of this research project.

Current Status of Research Progress

2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.

Reason

I achieved everything, what I planned for the 2018. The year of 2018 was the first year of this research project and thus the research plan for this year was to identify the current perceptions and premises upon which the new provisions in copyright laws, court decisions and solutions proposed by scholars are based. This aim was achieved.

Strategy for Future Research Activity

In the following research, I will focus on the preparation of questionnaires for cross-country surveys. The questionnaires will focus on collecting data on how respondents perceive the wrongfulness of various uses of another person’s tangible and intangible objects without the right holder’s consent for commercial and non-commercial purposes. To do so, I will design short stories describing several acts of misappropriation. Into the stories, I will code considerations which are expected that they can affect respondents’ judgments on the wrongfulness of such activities. The respondents will be asked to judge on a Likert-type five grade scale, to what extent the described activity is wrongful. In addition to the experimentally varied stories, the questionnaires will also contain several questions to measure (a) demographics of respondents, such as gender, age, profession, income, leisure time activities and the like, and (b) possible biases of respondents.

Causes of Carryover

In the year of 2018 I focussed on collecting the necessary literature and sources for conducting a survey of current situations in the studied jurisdictions. In order to have sufficient amount of funds for conducting surveys in the following years, I saved certain amount in order to use it in the year of 2019. The unspent amount will be used during the year of 2019 during collecting data on consumers’ views on wrongfulness of using copyrighted works without the right holders’ consent for commercial and non-commercial purposes.