Copyright and risk: how to judge what to do

This article looks at a number of key risk factors that cut across multiple legal systems. The author highlights the causes by which some degree of risk associated with the copyright protected materials. This includes a range of decisions about probabilities, legal interpretations and economic consequences. Its aim is not to encourage people to break the law, but to help them understand their choices within a system that is more flexible than often portrayed. The key factors include the social contract in which the rights owner may abstain from defending their rights in a work. However, when this social contract extends to some commercial publishers which comes under written contract who give back certain rights to the author such as post copies of the works for free access on institutional website or in institutional repositories. Another major factor is the out of print materials in which it may have renewed economic value as publishing technologies change and orphaned work may be freely available on the web. The legal exemptions also become a major hindrance in which the courts do not weigh these factors equally, and recent decisions have tended to emphasize the principle that a fair is not one that takes money from the rights holder.