RE: The good fight

On Wednesday, October 02, 2002 4:55 PM, Susan Aker [SMTP:susan[_at_]the-lanman.com] wrote:
> RE: The good fightI am not a lawyer, but I see little harm in rejecting
the Berne Convention - even for our authors.
>
> Berne not only requires copyright to extend beyond the life of the
author, but it also requires automatic copyright -- which I hold to be a against all sense. Copyright holders, under Berne, are GIVEN a tremendous gift of time WITHOUT requiring them to take any responsibility - not even to register the work and preserve it against loss by inclusion in the Library of Congress.
>
> The Berne Convention was about Natural Law Copyright, which the Supreme
Court (unlike Congress) has always sided against. The United States Constitution clearly defines the power of Congress to establish copyright laws as a law primarily for the advancement of learning by means of a limited exclusive right to publish. This is not, in any way, shape, or form, a natural law way of looking at copyright. I firmly believe that becoming a signatory to the Berne Convention Treaty was unconstitutional.
>

These are all perfectly valid criticisms.

However, it is simply unrealistic to suggest that the USA should not participate in the international copyright system, which, whether you like it or not, means the Berne Convention.

At the risk of veering off-topic, as a non-American, my heart sinks when I see intelligent American citizens proposing isolationism, whether in this field or any other. The rest of the world needs US participation in its institutions; and the USA needs the rest of the world.

If there are things about Berne which you do not like, then there are procedures for changing them. Not easy or straightforward, I grant you, but it can be done. The objections you have voiced are not uniquely American; there are plenty of people around the world with whom they will resonate. But you abandon them as soon as you advocate your isolationist position of abrogating the treaty. Like environmental protection, copyright is a global matter since content - particularly English language, American content - is traded globally.

The fundamental premise of Berne, I submit, is not so much Natural Law copyright, as national treatment: each nation gives the works of all other nations' citizens the same treatment as its own.

Edward Barrow
New Media Copyright Consultant
http://www.copyweb.co.uk/
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