Ana-Maria Baciu at Webstock 2013: Respect Others’ Intellectual Property Rights!
Webstock 2013, one of the most important social media conferences in Romania, supported by NNDKP, was not only about social media trends, but also about intellectual property matters. At the event, Ana-Maria Baciu (Partner and head of IP) elaborated on one of her specialties, copyrights in online.
Ana-Maria’s presentation covered issues such as: what is and is not protected in online; how and for how long you can protect your work; and the differences between patrimonial and moral rights. She also approached other important legal aspects that any blogger should be aware of, such as:
The automatic copyright protection of the author’s work does not apply to ideas, theories and information from news sources nor to objective facts and data.
The author has the right to allow or reject the reproduction of his work, its distribution, rent, loan, use for commercial purposes, and any communication about the work or its dissemination.
In the “good to know” category, Ana-Maria pointed out as well that:
The work is protected during the author’s life and 70 years after his death.
In addition to the patrimonial rights, which can be transferred to a third party, the author also has moral rights, which are non-transferrable. For example, he can claim authorship, can decide the name under which the work will be published, can claim observance of integrity, can oppose any modification if it is detrimental to his honor or reputation, and can retract the work, offering compensation if necessary.
Ana-Maria Baciu commented:
“I tried to clarify some of the most frequent ‘dilemmas’ bloggers face, especially that there are a lot of ‘urban myths’ circulating, but with no real, legal back-up. Some examples are: ‘you can reproduce any copyrighted work as long as you provide a link to the source’, ‘if you only cite the first X words from an article, it’s not copyright infringement’, or ‘as long as we only take less than Y seconds from this song, we are not forced to pay for copyright’. In reality things are different, and without express permission from the author or payment of some usage fee, you are only allowed to use partial content under certain conditions such as: examples in particular analyses, quotes for educational purposes, specific reproductions made by accessible libraries with no commercial purposes, or usage at exhibitions and fairs in order to promote the work.”
Organized by Evensys, the event comprises the Webstock conferences and the Webstock award gala, and brings together over 500 social media and communication specialists. The conferences are interactive discussions about trends and good practices in social media, promotion and communication, presenting the latest technologies and applications available. The award ceremony honors the most creative and innovative social media projects and campaigns from Romania in the last months.
