Authorship
Authorship
1. What is required for a person to be recognized as the author of a copyrighted work?
1. Is the mere fact of its creation sufficient?
2. Or does it even have to fix the job in a tangible way to secure authorship over it and then be called “author” within the meaning of copyright law?
3. Should the work be published?
4. What if you notice that you are the copyright holder of the work itself?
Reading the Albanian copyright law does not require anything other than creating the work, being called its author, and enjoying copyright protection. According to Albanian law, the person who did the job won copyright protection when it was created. The work doesn’t need to be fixed on any tangible means, nor is it essential to notice who the copyright belongs to and when it began.
1. Any person who infringes one or more of the copyrights on this work may be sued.
2. It should be emphasized that, in some states, the mere fact of creating the work is not enough to protect the copyright.
3. In addition to creating the job, you must also fix it in a tangible means of expression. This is the case in the US and England, for example.
4. I think the condition of setting the work on a tangible tool is essential because how can you prove that the work already existed, that you are its author and that it was subsequently copied, let’s say?
Think for a moment about someone giving a speech or a talk for a precise moment. Someone secretly records it and then quotes the whole statement in another work, let’s say in a book, calling himself the author of it. How can you sue in court when you have no material proof, no document, or record of your statement? This would make the defense more complex; the only protection would be witnesses.
In the US, until 1989, when the US signed the Berne Convention, some formalities had to be respected, such as posting a notice that the work was protected by copyright. But since the Berne Convention for the Protection of Copyright does not require these formalities, the US was forced not to direct them. However, they are still needed, as the damages you can sue for are higher when the work has a copyright notice.
Like the laws of all those states that are party to the Berne Convention, Albanian law requires no other formality. So it is not necessary to put a notice of copyright and say that the copyright belongs to this or that person. Today it is common practice to see in the books the copyright mark followed by the words “Copyright” or (Copyright) belongs to this or that person. But it should be clear to everyone that the absence of such notice does not deprive a person of copyright protection. Usually, the author of the work, and therefore the copyright holder, is the one whose name appears typically in work as its author’s name. The story of the development and protection of copyright in the world
Copyright has its beginnings in the history of Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. However, it cannot be copyrighted at that time as it is known today. Economic rights at that time were not recognized, and the authors’ concern was to identify them as authors of their writings. Economic rights began to be claimed only by the 15th century when printing was invented. By then, copying a manuscript was a slow and complicated process, performed mainly by monks.
With the creation of the ability to print books easily and freely, the issue of piracy came up. By the end of the 15th century, printing technology in England facilitated rapid multiplication and the distribution of copies of written works, so the King decided to exercise the royal prerogative to regulate the book trade. Many decrees were issued in England at that time, but they were intended merely to control the content of what was printed. The monopoly of book printing was given to the guild system of printing houses, which had to check whether the printed books were hostile to the Church or the King.
From the beginning of the 18th century, book publishers in England pressed for a new type of copyright regime that would focus more on property rights than censorship. They demanded that copyright be an eternal right that belonged to booksellers, as were landowners’ rights. Thus in 1709, the first copyright act in the United Kingdom came into force, the Statute of Anne of 1709, which became law in 1711. The statute protected copyright in books and writings by others.
The statute did not fulfill many of the wishes of the booksellers, and he decided that the authors themselves would be the ones who should benefit from the copyright and not the booksellers. Also, copyright was conceived as a right that lasted up to 14 years and could be renewed for another 14 years. The statute, therefore, was intended to protect the consumer by banning the monopolies of printing and book publishers. The offenses went into public possession as soon as the term of protection expired.
