CIPIL Seminar: The Justifications Behind the Legal Protection of Self-help Mechanisms. A presentation by Petroula Vantsiouri

This presentation will explore the legislative history of the Software Directive, the Information Society Directive, the Conditional Access Directive and of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in order to identify the justifications that led to the adoption of anti-circumvention regulation in the EU and the US. Self-help mechanisms that control access to and uses of digital works, also known as Technological Protection Measures (TPMs), have been criticised as ineffective in achieving their goals. Based on this criticism the entertainment and information industries ask for further protection of their rights and the introduction of stricter rules, whereas copyright sceptics ask for the abandonment of the use of TPMs. Both claims depend though on what exactly constitutes the aim that TPMs can actually serve.

Petroula Vantsiouri is a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Cambridge. Her research interests lie in intellectual property law and information law. Her doctoral thesis takes a comparative stand towards the intended and unintended consequences of anticircumvention regulation in the European Union and in the United States, as they are applied in different sectors, namely broadcasting, software and other copyright works.

Friday 30 November at 1.00pm in Room B16, Faculty of Law

A sandwich lunch will be available before the talk.

Please contact Gaenor Moore for further information.