Protection of "Neighboring Rights"

Although the systems of copyright protection in the countries belonging to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works on the one hand and in the United States and several other countries of the Western Hemisphere on the other, may differ in various respects,' they also have important points of similarity.One of these points of likeness is that, in principle, only a literary or artistic work can be protected by copyright.Generally speaking, such protection is not extended-or at any rate not on the same footing-to materials which are not far removed, such as: news (not the form thereof, which is eligible for copyright protection, but the content), ideas (again apart from their concrete form), the performance of literary or artistic works by artists, the recording or broadcasting thereof, etc.The line of demarcation between what is and what is not capable of protection in this way will of necessity always be dependent on the one hand on the consideration that parasitic imitation or exploitation of another's intellectual performance is socially undesirable, and on the other hand on the recognition that as much liberty as possible should be left to industry and trade.It is undeniable, however, that tradition also plays a certain part in this matter: after all, the origin of copyright is the desire to protect literary works against plagiarism 2 and this origin makes itself felt with great persistency and constitutes an obstacle to the early incorporation of new technical developments into copyright legislation.However this may be, there is a serious question today whether this situation is satisfactory, and particularly whether, if not the copyright itself, then in any case "neighboring rights" should concern themselves with the protection of the materials referred to above.It is my intention to consider some aspects of this problem in the following pages.I shall confine myself to the possibilities of protecting performers, recorders, and broadcasters, because these possibilities in particular have attracted much attention of late and have led to the publication of a voluminous literature 3