English abstract
As part of the requirements of Master degree in Library and Information science the researcher has chosen the following subject as his main area of research: "Author's copyright : a comparative study between Gulf Cooperation Council states (GCC) legislations and Canadian legislations." The research aims at highlighting the development of the current legal discourses in GCC states related to the copyrights and comparing them with Canadian discourses on the same subject in order to spot the imperfections and amend them. Therefore, the comparative methodology has been adopted to achieve the goals of this thesis, i.e. the researcher has studied and revised the official legal discourses of the concerned countries. The research is divided into two parts that each of which includes three chapters. The first part is directed to the theoretical background and dimensions of the study, whereas the second part is to demonstrate analysis, comparison and findings. The research endeavors to answer three main questions. First, what is the reality of the author's copyright in the studied countries? The researcher shows that there are some differences between the legislations in the GCC countries as there is perfection in some areas and negligence in others. However, they were successful by including some articles on digital materials. Therefore, these copyright legislations can be considered modern and up to the new developments in the field of copyrights as they outmatch the Canadian legislations in some areas. The second question focuses on the flaws of the GCC legislations. The researcher details these flaws in the findings and he highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the legislations. However, the third question explores the influences of the copyright legislations on libraries and information establishments. The researcher displays various changes that caused by digital materials to the copyrights and libraries in terms of the following aspects :
* GCC legislations should protect students when they obtain soft copies.
* The libraries should share databases in order to meet the requirements of the beneficiaries without any responsibility. They also should provide the reader with necessary information about publishers through the so-called open permission.
* GCC legislations keep up with the development and changes in terms of contents in spite of some flaws. However, making amendments to these legislations is the weakness of these legislations; therefore, it should be taken into consideration. In conclusion, the researcher suggests establishing standard GCC legislations that take all these flaws into account and which can be updated regularly in away that are similar to the European countries.
