Sheehan, Christopher2011-03-172022-10-252011-03-172022-10-2520102010https://ir.wgtn.ac.nz/handle/123456789/23437This paper will discuss four issues that lie at the heart of copyright. It will begin by assessing the historical and contemporary relationship between censorship and copyright. These two concepts have long been intertwined. Copyright began with licensing, a way for the government to censor works. This paper will show how the foundations of copyright are rooted in censorship. But copyright evolved. It came to be used as a way to not allow censorship, but to discourage it as much as possible. However, one may now ask, has it devolved? Copyright once supported Dickens, but some now assert that it gives corporations, churches and authors estates the tools of censorship. Copyright can prevent one from conveying a message, pursuing beliefs, expressing inspiration or cultural traditions, or promoting learning. This paper will assess if the current framework of copyright law sufficiently guards against censorship. This paper will then determine the relationship copyright has with freedom of expression. It will show that copyright was once the “engine of freedom of expression”, a position it fulfilled by creating a right to the use of ones expression. This engine would power the dissemination of knowledge and information, seen as essential to “individual liberty and democratic government.” This paper will examine how copyright fulfilled this function. It will then pose two questions. Is copyright still that engine? This will be answered with reference to copyrights laws today. Whether it is or is not, is that engine still required to protect expression? It is asserted that the extent to which copyright aids censorship, or conversely freedom of expression, depends on the rights that copyright grants to both owners and users. Some scholars believe that the view of copyright as a property right has led to more rights than necessary for owners, and less rights than necessary for users. They assert has been damaging for freedom of expression, and a boon for censorship. This paper will assess these claims. First it will examine the early history of copyright, looking at why copyright was enacted, and the shape it first took. It will then assess the changes between pre-modern and modern copyright that took place in England in the 19th century. This paper will compare and contrast between the rights granted in those times, and today. It will ask whether copyright now grants too many rights to owners, and too few to users. This paper will assess if this does in fact harm freedom of expression, while allowing censorship. Finally, this paper will assess the new framework of copyright, censorship and freedom of expression allowed by modern technology. Traditional disseminations of information were limited by space, transport, geography. This is now supplanted by the internet, “which puts information from diverse sources at our fingertips, to an extent exceeding the wildest dreams of previous generations.” This new found importance means that the future of copyright and its relationship with freedom of expression and censorship will to some extent depend on the internet and digital media. Therefore the laws and regulations we place on the internet and digital media are of utmost importance. This paper will assess how the internet effects copyright, censorship and freedom of expression. It will look to how the internet can benefit freedom of expression and how copyright and other laws can help or hinder this. Finally, this paper will investigate the recently enacted Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). It will determine the possible effects this legislation could have on copyright, censorship and freedom of expression. These four issues will be discussed with reference to both past and present. This will allow us to see how copyright has evolved over the centuries, and whether it has devolved in modern times. By looking to the past and the present, this paper also poses questions about the future of copyright law, the view of which has changed dramatically in the last decades, as computers and the internet change the equation once more.pdfen-NZCopyrightCensorshipFreedom of expressionText