Re: WIPO Copyright Treaty Article 11 & Grammar

On 4/20/98, Bob Stock <bstock[_at_]ucla.edu> wrote:
>
> Article 11 of the WIPO Copyright Treaty of 1996 states:
>
> "Contracting Parties shall provide adequate legal protection and
> effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective
> technological measures that are used by authors in connection with
> the exercise of their rights under this Treaty or the Berne
> Convention and that restrict acts, in respect of their works, which
> are not authorized by the authors concerned or permitted by law."
>
> I am interested in parsing grammatically the last clause "not authorized
> by the authors concerned or permitted by law." For the purpose of this
> message I am *not* interested in any substantive arguments as to what it
> means, just grammatical and logic arguments.
>
> Here are my questions:
>
> 1. Does the "not" in the last clause modify both authorized and
> permitted?

Yes. Definitely. I think the clause could have been written more clearly as "...which are either (1) not authorized by the authors concerned or (2) not permitted by law."

> 2. Is there only one possible answer to #1, or could the "not" modify
> authorized but not modify permitted?

Grammatically, there's a hopeless number of interpretations. Some others:

1. It is the works themselves which are not authorized by the authors and which are not permitted by law. Perhaps they're subversive?
2. It is the authors who are concerned or who are permitted by law to give authorization.

> a. Is the meaning of that construction "neither authorized nor
> permitted"?
>
> b. Is the meaning of that construction "either not authorized or not
> permitted"?

I think it's b. But I would have to resort to external considerations (like what would make sense, which you expressly don't want to know about) to prove it. Without reference to the semantics, the clause is hopelessly ambiguous.

> 4. For whatever your answers are, do you have any source (either
> grammar or logic) to support your answers?

Only this:

Clauses which are grammatically identical to the one at issue can easily be constructed, some of which MUST be interpreted one way and some of which must be interpreted another to be sensible. Simplifying the structure of the paragraph for ease of illustration, I offer the following examples:

(a): "Contracting Parties shall provide directions to cities, near rivers, which are not listed on maps or shown in Microsoft TravelWeb."

(b): "Contracting Parties shall provide directions to cities, near rivers, which are not listed on maps or located only with great difficulty."

(a) and (b) above are grammatically identical. Yet in (a), the only reasonable interpretation gives the "not" scope over both "listed" and
"shown" and in (b) the only reasonable interpretation gives the "not" scope over "listed" but not "located".

I therefore submit that it is provable that the grammatical structure of clauses like these, considered alone, yields ambiguous results and that a satisfactory interpretation can only be derived by considering the very thing Bob doesn't want to see considered: the meaning.

-Ari

Ari Kahan
<akahan[_at_]netcom.com>

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