Voices near and far

Copyright laws are important regulators of cultural expression, because they grant extensive rights to control the reproduction, adaptation and communication of ‘literary’ and ‘artistic’ works. The twin concepts of authorship and original work are central to copyright laws the world over. They might not be clearly defined, and certainly not uniformly, but they enjoy global recognition. That is evident first and foremost by the fact that the Grande Dame of international copyright law, the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (1886/1971), has over 180 contracting states.