An Overview of 'Public Rights: Copyright's Public Domains' (Cambridge University Press, 2018)

Abstract

This overview summarises the main arguments in our book Public Rights: Copyright’s Public Domains (Cambridge University Press, 2018), chapter by chapter. By way of introduction, it explains our purposes as authors in writing the book, and some ways in which it is differentiated from other books which consider copyright law from critical perspectives. The book defines the public domain positively in terms of the freedom (or negative liberty) to use ‘works’, where ‘freedom’ in this context is use that is not subject to permission from another. The public domain emerges as the answers to the question: ‘What rights do the public have to use works without asking for permission?’ The fifteen categories of the copyright public domain for which the book argues are:

(1) works failing minimum requirements; (2) works impliedly excluded; (3) works expressly excluded; (4) constitutional and related exclusions and exceptions; (5) works in which copyright has expired; (6) public domain dedications; (7) public policy refusals against enforcement; (8) public interest defence to enforcement; (9) insubstantial parts; (10) ideas or facts; (11) uses outside exclusive rights; (12) free use exceptions and limitations; (13) neutral compulsory licensing; (14) neutral voluntary licensing; (15) de facto public domain of benign uses.

The public domain is the sum of these public rights for any given national jurisdiction. Each of these aspects of the public domain are examined in detail, and from an international comparative perspective.

Keywords: copyright, public domain, public rights, user rights, intellectual property