Sci Journals, authors, internet

[Tom]

On Thu, Jun 13, 2002 at 07:45:18AM -0700, Mike Rosing wrote:
> > if used differently, the "morale rights" part could well be used to put
> > a limit on the corporate abuse of copyright. for example, I could
> > envision an argument that an artist sues the RIAA for abusing his
> > copyrighted works for bogus lawsuits against P2P systems.
> 
> I guess the argument would boil down to who has copyright and who or what
> has "moral right".  For sculpture and painting the duplication rights are
> kind of obvious, but the destruction/use/"first sale" is complicated.
> For digital art/music duplication rights are complicated, and use in
> other works ("fair use") gets really messy.

I guess you misinterpret the "morale rights" doctrine. not that I'm a
lawyer, but to my reading of the german copyright law, the morale
rights are thus:

- publication
  the creator can control if and how his work gets published. only he may
  cite from or describe his work in public as long as neither the work
  nor a description of it are published with his permission.
  (e.g. even the publisher can't leak stuff without the author's consent)
  
- credit
  the creator must be given proper credit, and he can choose if and
  what kind of credit (e.g. if he wants to use his real name or a
  pseudonym)
  
- defense against disfiguration (?)
  creator can fight against attacks on the integrity of his work,
  within limits.
  this is the complicated part. as I parse it, the intention was that
  if you, say, write a poem against communism and by some freak
  accident the communist party adopts it as their hymn, you can stop
  them from doing so (unless you enjoy the irony of it).



to me, the german copyright appears to take much more consideration of
the author, while the US copyright system is entirely economical in
nature. no surprise that the idea of "intellectual property" comes from
your side of the atlantic, it doesn't fit very well with most european
copyright doctrines.
that said, your original terms of copyright were more sensible - europe
has always had durations such as 70 years or "death + 50 years" and
other bullshit.

too bad the "new world order copyright" takes the bad from each,
instead of the good.


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