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Hampton Press Publishes Cox Center Book On Copyright in Eastern Europe and the U.S.
The development of copyright law in Eastern and Central Europe as well as in the United States is examined in a new book, edited by researchers in the James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research at the University of Georgia and published by Hampton Press in early 2003.
The book, Copyright and Consequences: Central European and U.S. Perspectives, provides an overview of developments in copyright law in eastern and central Europe in the period of political and economic change of the 1990s, of major issues in international copyright negotiations, and of copyright in the United States. Underlying these discussions is an examination of the role of copyright in economic and social development.
Dr. Lee B. Becker and Dr. Tudor Vlad, director and assistant director of the Cox Center, assembled a team of experts from Europe and the U.S. to write on the topic. Included are Drs. James Fletcher, C. Ann Hollifield, and Kent Middleton from the faculty of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. The Cox Center is a unit of the Grady College.
Copyright law in Russia was covered by Dr. Michael Newcity, while copyright issues in Germany after the fall of the German Democratic Republic were described by Dr. Stefan Haupt. The new copyright law in Bulgaria was analyzed by Gueorgui Sarakinov. Other chapters in the book cover copyright in Belarus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and the Slovak Republic.
Others contributors from the United States were Dr. Michael S. Shapiro and Dr. Ray Patterson of the University of Georgia School of Law.
The book is an outgrowth of a workshop held at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in June of 1998. That workshop was organized by Drs. Vlad and Becker. At that time, Dr. Vlad was head of the Department of Journalism of Babes-Bolyai University.
Dr. Vlad came to the Cox Center as a Senior Fulbright School in the autumn of 1999 and has worked on various research projects in the Center, including the copyright book, since that time. He was appointed assistant director of the Center in the summer of 2002.
"Eastern European and U.S. copyright law share many similarities, which tend to be more important in a global economy bound by the Internet," editors Vlad and Becker argue in the conclusion of the book.
"After more than 150 years of development, the international copyright system remains fundamentally a patchwork of national legal systems linked through an intricate network of treaties," Shapiro argues in the chapter on international copyright law.
"The international policy is clearly sustained in emerging democracies by the majority of the political parties," Clondescu concludes in his chapter on copyright in Romania.
Hampton Press is an independent publisher specializing in titles on communication topics. It is located in Cresskill, New Jersey.
