Re: Fair Use to report report news: Berne Union & UCC

On Thu, 3 Jun 1999, Albert Henderson <noblestation[_at_]compuserve.com> wrote:
>
> I believe most news organizations redistribute important news
> ...
> Stories can be picked up and rewritten without copying word for
> word.

The question comes when they reproduce the work as such. For example, in the case of pictures of the *My Lai massacre* in the Vietnan War, or the film of *President Kennedy's assassination*.

The Berne Convention says that countries can adopt legislation that allow to reproduce events like this. US did (case of fair use to "report news"), UK also did ("current events") and also Spain ("issues of nowadays"). For example, if the owner of the films about Kennedy had distributed them with a clause of copyright, might have they freely distributed?

In the case of England, such clauses can be considered upon fair use freedoms (in England the author of similar films could in principle reserve his rights). In the case of Spain, legislation also expects clauses of copyright in the reporting of news. I don't know about the US.

My question is about the Berne Convention, to help to interpret this situation.

The Berne convention in art. 10 bis) **also expects clauses of copyright as an exception to the right to report news**. But I think that this exception of the "copyright clauses" was introduced to coordinate the traffic of the Universal Copyright Convention works with those of the Berne Union countries. When a work coming from a UUC country is reproduced in a BU country, this article ensures that the limit of the 10 bis will not be applied to this works, if they bear a notice of copyright.

It would be unbelievable that a in the case of a similar event as the Kennedy's assasination, distribution of films might be stopped by a clause of copyright; legislation of Spain ensures that he would receive royalties, however.

Therefore I think that the aim of the 10 bis) was to coordinate the life of both blocks, when the Universal Copyright Convention block was still alive.

What do you think about this argument?

Do you know where I can find the records of the delibarations that introduced the article 10 bis -maybe in the Paris Conference, 1971-? Is there a web site about this? -The WIPO site looks useless-.

Thank you very much.

Carlos de Miguel
Attorney and former professor of Commercial Law Castellana 179 - 28046 Madrid
Spain
<c_miguel[_at_]idecnet.com> Received on Fri Jun 04 1999 - 18:56:01 GMT