Peter wrote:
(Hmm, I wonder if it can be argued that making stuff intended for public distribution inaccessible violates the creator's moral rights? I know that doesn't apply in the US, but in other countries it might work. Moral rights can't be assigned, so no publisher can take that away from you.
Peter has an interesting point, since in addition to common law applies to a trend in copyright that is prevalent in Europe (and presumably some other countries), but rather alien to the US, taking that trend further. For those readers not familiar with this trend, there is the gist of it: Everybody on this list knows that what buyers of bit strings may or not do with such bit strings, under pain of incarceration and, should you resist that effectively, death, is under global attack by the MPAA and its cohorts. What US observers are frequently less aware of is that the same right is as much under attack, albeit for very different reasons, by the European cultural elite which has been as effective as the MPAA in working on their shared goal of dismantling what in the US would be called the doctrine of first sale. In brief, this doctrine states that if you buy a book, painting, or DVD, you may read or watch it for as many times as you please (including not at all), loan it to your friends, donate it to a library, sell it to somebody else, or chuck it out with the trash. The MPAA desires to dismantle the doctrine of first sale for the easily understandable reason that the MPAA's members would like to approximate as closely as possible to a state in which each person watching a movie has to pay the studios each time the DVD is watched. If the technology existed at a cost acceptable for a consumer device to count the number of people present in a room watching a particular DVD, the MPAA likely would lobby Congress to mandate that technology's inclusion to permit for the collection of per-watcher/watching licensing fees. The other half of the shears cutting away at the public's right to entertain themselves with the artwork they purchased in any way they please is represented by parts of the art culture of significant political clout, in particular in Europe. Bills are pending or have already passed, that make it illegal for a buyer of a work of art to simply dispose of the work, or use it as kindling in his fireplace, once he no longer desires to own it. No, you can't just burn that painting you bought from some street corner painter five years ago. Though you are permitted to give the painting back to the artist. Without compensation, of course. Between the corporate objective of charging the readers of a book each time they read it and the elitist objective of forcing the buyer to read a book they bought at least on occasion, with both groups united in their zeal to impose their respective view points onto the public by force of law and the men with sub-machine guns the law employs, the future of copyright proves to be interesting. But you already knew that part. While the European art circles clamoring for such moral right protection acts would undoubtedly denounce the assertion that they are working hand in glove with the MPAA's objective of dismantling the doctrine of first sale to the detriment of society, the two groups in fact are natural allies or pawns, depending on their level of awareness of the situation. Undoubtedly this has not been overlooked by the MPAA, though I suspect the European artists are blissfully unaware of how they have helped and continue to help to grease the MPAA's skids. --Lucky