Page 35 - A Study on the Role of UGC Platforms in Copyright Law：An Intermediary-oriented Approach

A Study on the Role of UGC Platforms in Copyright Law: Chapter 2 Copyright in the Pre-Internet Age: An Intermediary-oriented Approach
An Intermediary-oriented Approach

television operators, audio cassette recorder manufacturers and Internet service providers. It
should be noted that a distributor can turn into a producer if the copyrighted work distributed
or adapted to the new media is recognised as a new subject matter of copyright. For example,
when printed sheet music was distributed and adapted to recordings and sound recordings
were recognised as a new category of copyrighted work, sound recording manufacturers,
namely, record labels, could transit from being distributors to producers. When novels
were distributed and adapted to films and films were acknowledged as copyrighted works,
filmmakers were regarded as producers.
This chapter shows how the interaction between producers and distributors promises
users a variety of widely distributed copyrighted works at a reasonably low price. To
examine the need for intermediaries under copyright law, Section 2.2 explores the history of
how cultural products were created and distributed in the pre-copyright age. This is followed
by an analysis of how copyright grew out of the advent of printing technology and the rise of
printers and publishers. Section 2.3 describes the evolution of copyright rules in the printing,
music and film industries respectively, elucidating how producers and distributors have
promoted technological innovation and expanded the public’s access to copyrighted works in
the process of advancing their private interests.

2.2 The Origin of Copyright and the Rise of Publishers: The
Symbiotic Relationship between Copyright Law and the
Publishing Intermediary

Copyright has been widely recognised as the engine driving the progress of knowledge,
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creativity and culture. However, cultural creation has continued to grow since the beginning
of human society, long before the emergence of copyright law. If cultural creation existed
without copyright law, why do we need copyright to incentivise creation? By exploring
the social framework governing the creation and dissemination of cultural products in the
oral, scribal and printing ages, this part of the thesis attempts to demonstrate why current
copyright law has adopted an intermediary-oriented approach and how this approach has
achieved the purpose of copyright law.

2.2.1 Cultural creation and distribution governed by social norms in the pre-
copyright age

1) Oral culture: Cultural products as collective representations and collective intelligence
Because creating is part of the essential nature of human beings, knowledge emerged
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with the genesis of human society. Before the advent of written materials such as papyrus

14 United States Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8; Mark A. Lemley, Peter S. Menell and Robert P. Merges, Intellectual
Property in the New Technological Age: 2016: Vol. II Copyrights, Trademarks and State IP Protections (Clause 8 Publishing
2016) 12.
15 Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Harper 2015) 23.

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