Limitations and exceptions to copyright are provisions in copyright law which allow for copyrighted works to be used without a license from the copyright owner.
Limitations and exceptions to copyright relate to a number of important considerations such as market failure, freedom of speech, education and equality of access (such as by the visually impaired). Some view limitations and exceptions as "user rights" - seeing user rights as providing an essential balance to the rights of the copyright owners. There is no consensus among copyright experts as to whether user rights are rights or simply limitations on copyright. See for example the National Research Council's Digital Agenda Report, note 1. The concept of user rights has also been recognised by courts, including the Canadian Supreme Court in CCH Canadian Ltd v. Law Society of Upper Canada (2004 SCC 13), which classed "fair dealing" as such a user right. These kinds of disagreements in philosophy are quite common in the philosophy of copyright, where debates about jurisprudential reasoning tend to act as proxies for more substantial disagreements about good policy.
Read more about Limitations And Exceptions To Copyright: Changing Technology, Competition Law / Anti-trust Law, International Legal Instruments, National Laws
Famous quotes containing the words limitations and/or exceptions:
“The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“For true poetry, complete poetry, consists in the harmony of contraries. Hence, it is time to say aloud—and it is here above all that exceptions prove the rule—that everything that exists in nature exists in art.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)