LITERARY PIRACY AND TEXT RECYCLING AS LEGAL PHENOMENA

Abstract

The author of the article has analyzed the current legislation of Ukraine and legal literature on determining the concepts of “literary piracy”, “text recycling”. It has been proved that literary piracy as a legal phenomenon is a type of intellectual property infringement to objects that are protected as objects of intellectual property rights. It has been argued that literary piracy should not be considered as an abuse of the right to creativity by a person who commits literary piracy. Literary piracy is a generic term for academic literary piracy as a type of violation of academic honesty. It has been established that academic literary piracy and text recycling according to the current legislation of Ukraine are forms of fraudulent pretence as a type of academic honesty violation. The author has argued that if one establishes the fact of literary piracy as intellectual property infringement, the offender is subject to sanctions provided by the legislation on protection of intellectual property rights, such as compensation of damage (material damage), including lost profits, or recovery of proceeds received by an offender as a result of copyright infringement and (or) related rights. When the fact of academic literary piracy is established we apply sanctions, which are provided by the legislation on education and science, for example, cancellation of the decision of a one-time specialized scientific council on awarding a person with the PhD degree and issuing an appropriate diploma. It has been proved that text recycling is legal fiction in its essence, i.e. such a non-existent position, which is declared existing and becomes mandatory due to its enshrinement in the legal prescription. It has been substantiated that the legislation on the procedure of considering the issue of establishing academic literary piracy needs to be improved. It is also advisable to define different types of academic literary piracy at the legislative level. The author has offered to consider text recycling not as a legal category, but as a moral and ethical category in the context of ethical approaches to self-citing, academic honesty, etc.