Abstract
This chapter is about the rights conferred by the law on copyright owners and the types of activity that amount to copyright infringement. It begins by considering the right to copy the work, in particular its distinct definition for different categories and types of work. It then looks at other rights granted to copyright owners, including distribution right (and the concept of its ‘exhaustion’); the right to rent and lend copies of the work, including the distinctive treatment of digital copies; the right to perform the work in public and UK law’s concept of ‘the public’; the right to communicate the work to the public, including the CJEU’s extensive case-law on the concept of ‘a new public’ and its treatment of hyperlinking, file-sharing, and content-sharing platforms; and the right to make an adaptation of the work. The chapter concludes by considering the copyright owner’s right to ‘authorize’ the carrying out of any of the exclusive rights as a mechanism to extend the field of responsibility.
