Nineteenth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

The need to information and knowledge as to the human soul resembles his body’s need to food. Only through knowledge the human mind can develop. Accordingly, any obstacles that would prevent or disable human from getting his need to the knowledge shall be eliminated. However, this may clash with the necessity to protect the rights of the producers of such knowledge, just as it is necessary to protect the rights of the producers of food. Many laws and international conventions regulate the relationship between the producers and distributors of good and services and the consumers. The main target of such regulation is to protect the consumer against any advantage taken on his account when dealing with professionals. However, the question remains whether the receiver of knowledge can benefit from such protection, and can the author be deemed as consumer in relation with publishers and producers. To this end, this study sheds light on consumer protection in the copyrights area so as to answer some questions, the most important of which are: Does the consumption concept apply in the copyright context, who is the consumer in the area? Is he the receiver of the information? Can the author himself be deemed as a consumer in some cases? What are the rights of the consumer under consumer protection and copyrights laws in the UAE and the international conventions? Are copyright laws alone able to provide sufficient protection to the author or the receiver of knowledge?