underlying facts referred to in the work, but he may not copy the work itself. That is so even if
the motives for wanting to copy are laudable, for example for educational, public service or other
reasons.To this extent, copyright gets in the way of disseminating information. That is and for a long time
has been one of its effects. Copyright in a piece of written historical or scientific research to
some extent hinders the spread of the knowledge or theories contained in them. Copyright
protects a wide spectrum of works extending from great literature and famous films at one end,
through works of history and science and down to more mundane works like railway timetables
and television programme listings at the other.A film cannot be deprived of its statutory copyright simply because the courts feel its subject
matter is unimportant, newsworthy, offensive or only ephemeral. ...[A]n industry based on
exploiting film footage and sound recordings has grown up on the back of these statutory rights
and their equivalents in other countries. For example, ... the famous film footage of President
Kennedy’s assassination is only available from one film library, and then only on payment of a
fee of many thousands of dollars. Furthermore, it has not been suggested in this case that the
court has an unfettered right to refuse to enforce copyright where it thinks that to do so would
be “fair”. For better or for worse, the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 has set out a
number of specific exceptions to the blanket scope of copyright infringement. ...Chapter III of the Act consists of a collection of provisions which define, with extraordinary
precision and rigidity, the ambit of various exceptions to copyright protection. Although it is
apparent that these provisions are designed to address situations where there are thought to be
public policy grounds for restricting the copyright owner’s rights, it is the legislature which has
specified where and the extent to which the public policy overrides the copyright. The courts
must construe the provisions. Within proper limits, they may do so in a way which is designed
to make reasonable sense. But the provisions are not to be regarded as mere examples of a
general wide discretion vested in the courts to refuse to enforce copyright where they believe
such refusal to be fair and reasonable.- Infringement may occur even if the defendant has no intention of
profit
EXAMPLE:Police officers, acting on a search warrant that was later held invalid, seized
medical records from a clinic and were required to return the originals. They,
however, retained photocopies they had made of the records. The clinic,
seeking to have the copies handed over to it, sued the police for infringing
copyright in the medical records as original literary works. The police claimed
their copying was not commercial and thus not an infringement.Auckland Medical Aid Trust v. Commissioner of Police, [1976] 1 N.Z.L.R.
485 (New Zealand: Supreme Court)MR JUSTICE WILSON:[Counsel for the police] contended that when the police officers photocopied the plaintiff ’s
records they did not “reproduce” them ... because there was no intention of “appropriating” the
plaintiff ’s labours by so doing... “Appropriating”, according to [counsel], is using for a(^140) commercial purpose or converting to one’s own use...