46. évfolyam, 2000. 1-2. szám

Archívum

Since September 1999 the legal protection of the rights of authors and their intellectual achievements have been regulated by a new copyright law.
The scope of copyright law has been expanded to include artistic pieces of photography, cartography and cartographic works. The author has personal and material rights. It is new that personal rights, similarly to material rights, are in force only within the protection period. The protection period is 70 years for authors, however, authors who died between 31 December 1928 and 31 December 1943 enjoy protection again, and so do sound recordings from after 1948. So far as material rights are concerned, it is a novelty that the author is entitled for a fee proportionate to the income gained by the utilisation of his/her work. From 1 September 2000 a reprography fee has to be paid to the authors of pieces produced by photocopying or other methods of multiplication. Book and journal publishers will also get their share of this income. New acts are included in the law concerning the utilisation contracts. The regulation setting the minimal fee and the time span of utilisation has got out of force, and these can be fixed freely in contracts. Pieces belonging under free use belong under stricter definitions. Public libraries may lend individual copies of the works freely, however, softwares or computer files cannot be lent by them either.

Országos Széchényi Könyvtár Észrevételek