the area of civil law which regulates the legal relations involved in the creation and use (publication, performance, showing, etc.) of works of science, literature, and art—that is, the products of the creative activity of people in these areas.
Socialist copyright takes as its basis the principle of combining personal and public interests; it ensures the moral and material stimulation of creative workers for creating socially useful works and disseminating scientific and cultural values among the masses. In the USSR, the norms of copyright are contained in the Fundamentals of Civil Legislation of the USSR and the Union republics, in the Civil Code, in model authors’ agreements, and in the acts of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the councils of ministers of Union republics, and also of the departments of the USSR and the Union republics.
In the USSR the author has the right to the publication, reproduction, and distribution of his work in all manners permitted by law—that is, the use of an author’s work is not permitted without his agreement and without conclusion of an author’s agreement; the right to authorship and the author’s name—in particular, the right to publication of the work under a pseudonym or anonymously; the right to the inviolability of the work, which means that only the author himself may introduce changes into his work or permit others to do so. All these competences—subjective copyrights—belong to the category of personal nonproperty rights. In addition, the author has subjective copyright to receive compensation for the use of the work by other individuals, except for cases indicated directly in the law. The instances when the use of a work without consent of the author and without payment of compensation is permitted in the interests of society include, in particular, the reproduction of published works in newspapers, in the cinema, on the radio, and on television; the reprinting of certain amounts of published works in scientific and critical works and educational and political-education publications; the alteration of the work into new, creatively independent works, etc. The consent of the author is not required, but compensation is paid, when published works, for example, are performed publicly or released on recordings. In the interests of broadening cultural exchange among the peoples of the USSR, translation of published works into the languages of the different nationalities is permitted without consent but with the notification of the author (the so-called freedom of translation). Legislation of the Union republics often reserves for the author the right to receive an honorarium when his work is used in translation, in particular, translation into Russian. The author’s rights are also protected in the case when the work is created in the course of fulfilling work duties; however, an author’s compensation above his wages is paid only if this is especially provided for by legislation (for example, for the publication of manuals and textbooks).
Copyright belongs to the author for life; the right to the publication, reproduction, and distribution of a work and the right to receive compensation is maintained for a 15–year period for the heir. In addition, competence in the protection of the inviolability of a work is secured for heirs and certain public organizations (for example, the Union of Writers of the USSR) after the death of the author.
For foreigners, copyright is recognized for works that are first published in the USSR or not published but existing within the boundaries of the USSR. Other works of foreigners may be protected only on the basis of and within the limits of international agreements concluded between the Soviet Union and other countries (for example, the agreement of Nov. 17, 1967, with Hungary, Sobranie postano-vienii Soveta ministrov SSSR (Collection of Resolutions of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, 1967, no. 30, art. 213).
A violated copyright may be protected by a legal action to restore a right (by means of a notice on authorship in the press, the introduction of corrections, etc.), to prevent a work’s publication, to suspend its distribution, or to recover losses resulting from the violation of copyright, usually in the amount of remuneration not received. Plagiarism is punished as a criminal offense.
Copyright in socialist countries has the same goals and is based on the same principles as Soviet copyright but has certain distinctive features. For example, in these countries copyright puts significantly narrower limits on the free use of a work, does not recognize freedom of translation, establishes a longer period of operation of copyright after the death of the author (20–50 years), and so forth.
The basic function of bourgeois copyright is to establish a monopoly on the sale of the work, which is treated as a commodity. As a rule, the author transfers the monopoly rights for the distribution and use of the work to an entrepreneur—a publisher, manager, film producer, etc. In bourgeois legislation, the personal property rights of the author are secondary; their real scope is limited in many cases. (Thus, in the USA the author’s right to the inviolability of the work is not recognized.) In many countries, the alienation of the monopoly (exclusive rights) to the use of the work in different manners is permitted for the whole active period of the copyright (usually not less than 50 years after the death of the author).
The majority of the capitalist states and all the socialist states of Europe except Albania guarantee the mutual protection of copyright for the works of their citizens and other works released on their territory by means of multilateral international conventions, of which the most broadly applied are the Berne (1886) and the so-called Universal (1952) Conventions.
I. A. GRINGOL’TS