Theories of Justice, Copyright and Music : is the modern copyright system fair?

Details

Supervisors

Lenoble, Jacques

Faculty

Faculté de droit et de criminologie

Degree label

Master [120] en droit

Abstract

Is the modern copyright system fair ? Copyright is a legal tool that plays a major role in our everyday lives: it controls our access to music, movies and other forms of entertainment. It guarantees that artists will be remunerated for their works by granting them the exclusive exploitation right over them. It was designed to enable the emergence of a balanced market of creativity in order to promote the broadest dissemination of culture, entertainment and artistic works. But in recent decades, copyright has come to be one of the least enforced and most often infringed property rights. Two evolutions have contributed to the crisis in which copyright finds itself today: the development of new online sharing technologies that make copyright infringement very easy and the populations’ opinion that copyright is morally wrong and part of an unfair system. This work’s goal is to address the philosophical gap that lies between the spirit of copyright laws and the mind-set of the growing number of citizens who don’t feel bound to respect intellectual property rights.