Copyright Infringement - Enforcement Responsibility

Enforcement Responsibility

The enforcement of copyright is the responsibility of the copyright holder. Article 50 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) requires that signatory countries enable courts to remedy copyright infringement with injunctions and the destruction of infringing products, and award damages. Copyright holders have started to demand through the ACTA trade agreement that states act to defend copyright holders' rights and enforce copyright law through active policing of copyright infringement. It has also been demanded that states provide criminal sanctions for all types of copyright infringement and pursue copyright infringement through administrative procedures, rather than the judicial due process required by TRIPs.

In the U.S., copyright infringement is sometimes confronted via lawsuits in civil court, against alleged infringers directly, or against providers of services and software that support unauthorized copying. For example, major motion-picture corporation MGM Studios filed suit against P2P file-sharing services Grokster and Streamcast for their contributory role in copyright infringement. In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of MGM, holding that such services could be held liable for copyright infringement since they functioned, and indeed willfully marketed themselves, as venues for acquiring copyrighted movies. The MGM v. Grokster case did not overturn the earlier Sony decision, but rather clouded the legal waters; future designers of software capable of being used for copyright infringement were warned.

In addition to legal maneuvers to curb copyright infringement, the motion picture industry tried different ways of distribution. Instead of waiting months after the debut of a movie to release it on DVD or video-on-demand, movies like Bubble (2005), were released on all formats at the same time, although still delayed from the theatrical release, and on different dates in different regions. Both the industry and advocates of file-sharing believe that further reducing such distribution "windowing" will reduce copyright infringement. Nevertheless, the industry's position is that with the Internet being a global entity, it will still take a combination of worldwide legal agreements, an agency tasked with enforcing the crimes, and new ways of selling products to reduce copyright infringement.