Ethics and Law in New Media, week eight

Study the Anglo-American and Continental European school of IP. Write a short comparative analysis to your blog (if you have clear preference for one over another, explain that, too).

I am trying to base my comparison on Laura Moscati's paper in which I found quite a good overview of these two systems after seeking for a long time for a plausible comparison.
The two systems differ mainly in two aspects where the Continental European school of IP (droit d'auteurs) protects the author's work throughout its various stages, and gives protection without formality. There is moral and economic right to be protected. The Anglo-American variant (Copyright Law) gives the right to reproduce copies in order to let the largest number of people access it. Before the work gets copyrighted, it has to be registered with Copyright Office after being reproduced and published. 
The paper also tells that America has recently joined Berne Convention of 1896. The list of countries from the US Copyright Office shows the countries that have relations with the US. Berne Convention countries are included. The abovementioned convention deals with authors' rights according to Continental European model, thus making the two schools of IP more similar than before. Laura Moscati also states that the initial roots of both schools come from the droit d'auteur of French origin. Copyright which emerged with the advent of the printing press, left its marks in both, the Continental European and the Anglo-American schools of IP.

I think that if I had to choose, I'd choose the Anglo-American school of IP, because the work is distributed to the largest number of people possible. I think that our course and also our speciality strives for ways how to distribute work to as many people as possible who need the work to progress, to create and gain new ideas from the past works. Copyright for copy-paste avoidance is fairly clear, but works should not be hidden behind financial benefit "curtains" if they delay the flow of thoughts and creations.