Re: Copyright & The New World Economic Order

This is an interesting article, and certainly things to be aware of. As the terms in Europe for copyright protection used to be considerably longer than in the U.S., it is possible to publish many books on-line in the US that are still protected by copyright over here. That gives the US an advantage in education, etc., that can be considerable.

On Fri, 9 Jul 1999, Harry Hillman Chartrand <h-chartrand[_at_]home.com> wrote:
>
> Under the Civil Code, all moral rights and some economic rights are
> granted exclusively to flesh and blood individuals, or so-called
> 'natural persons'. Such creator's rights, to quote the Tunis Model
> Law, are: "perpetual, inalienable and imprescriptible". Furthermore,
> most "may not be transferred" to another individual (except as an heir)
> nor to a corporation.

In the E.U. such rights are certainly not perpetual; they last as long as the economic rights. They are inalienable, and (at least in Holland) can only be transfered to a heir by an explicit statement. The economic control of course gives a lot of power to stop undesired mutulation, etc. of works, that those rights aim to protect. In Holland, it has now come so far that a building cannot be destructed, to replace it with a better, more up-to-date building, and can only be updated with consent of the original architect. This of course is the opposite of free trade, and thus very costly, as he is now in a monopoly position.

> In Canada we are now at the point that a library is required to assure
> itself that a patron is engaged in bona fide 'research and private
> study' before making any copies available to him or her. The
> Governor-in-Council, i.e. the Government in the name of Her Majesty,
> is authorized by the Act to establish, by regulation, what steps must
> be taken by a library to obtain this assurance. This is required to
> obtain a 'fair dealing' exception from copyright infringement!
> Similarly, under the Canadian Copyright Act the only thing a teacher
> can do in the classroom that does not constitute infringement is to
> hand write information on an erasable surface. It is, accordingly,
> with great concern that I see, in the recent passage of the Millennium
> Digital Copyright Act by the US Congress, 'fair dealing' slipping into
> American copyright.

Again, this means that the US has a definite benefit over other countries in Education, which it should continue to exploit.

I see a historical trend that copyrights are extended under continuing pressure of a few rightsholders, at the expense of the public. I think it is very important to keep in eye the public benefit and aims of copyright, and find the proper balance, that is, to get the creative incentive you want at the lowest possible price for the public.

> In much of the Third World, however, a different tradition exists which
> recognizes 'collective' or 'communal' or 'folkloric' copyright. This
> contrasts with the Western individual-based concept of intellectual
> property rights. Folkloric copyright recognizes rights to all kinds of
> knowledge, ideas and innovations produced in what can be called 'the
> intellectual commons', e.g. in villages among farmers, in forests among
> tribal peoples, and even in universities among academics. Such rights
> are not limited to the lifetime of an individual but rather exist in
> perpetuity with a specific group or an entire people. In 1984, UNESCO
> produced a Draft Treaty for the Protection of Expressions of Folklore
> against Illicit Exploitation and Other Prejudicial Action. It is not
> yet in force.

I think it goes extremely far to extend this kind of traditional law to the modern world, and incorporate it into copyright. This went much further than copyright, and differed from people to people, for example, among several Naga tribes, a certain type of cloth could only be worn by people who have achieved certain important things, like killing a tiger. This is not a copyright, but compares well to the fact that only genuine police officers may wear a police uniform. No formal copyrights exists, simply because their was no means of mass-copying, and it was as easy to create a new original pattern, as it was to copy an existing, (the introduction of mass-copying really inspired the copyright laws here) but of course many rules existed on who could make what, like, this or that group was the only group allowed to make baskets or copperware, etc. Of course they differed from poeple to people, and, often forgotten, from generation to generation, as culture is a dynamic thing. Much of the traditional art and craft has been forgotten, or even rejected by their modern heirs... I think it would be insane to now try and insert rights to certain designs based on ethnicity. I WILL BE VERY STRONGLY AGAINST SUCH RACIST IDEAS, and I consider all mention of ethnicy and rights as anti-democratic and totally unacceptable! I really see the public domain as belonging to all people. What if, for example, Jews, if this idea comes reality, starts charging for the old testament, which, of course, is a part of Jewish cultural heritage.

(By the way, I believe ethnicity, just like religion, can only be determined by self identification, and cannot be questioned or established by others. When I claim that I am ethnically a Cree Indian, everybody will have to accept it, even if today I claim I am a Dutch, and tomorrow that I am Bontoc Tribal, however idiotic that may be.)

This doesn't mean that I am not concerned with the acculturation of peoples all around the world, it is a very big concern to me, and one reason I am planning to make as much of the information on these peoples available on-line, to preserve it and make it accessible, as part of the cultural heritage of all mankind. In this I am much hampered by western copyrights, as many folk-tales written down by anthropologists are copyrighted by western publishers, who are capable of asserting that copyright in court, in spite of the flagrant breach of copyright the anthropologist made might have made by publishing those stories. (Not in all cases, the anthropologist would have explained he was going to publish the stories being told, and I don't believe they would hardly ever try to explain the concept of copyright, or pay his informant more than a one time sum of a few cents or a couple of sigarets.)

I am really in favour of having a single, simple and clear international concensus on copyright, because it would surely help "free trade" (which is ofcourse a nonsensical issue without free movement of people, which I really suggest to developing countries to demand, if western governments try to impose stricter IP laws on them in the name of "free trade") I would also like to see it truly global, in that publishers can no longer restrict exports of copies, once legally made, so in this aspect, we also create a truly global market.

Jeroen Hellingman
<jehe[_at_]kabelfoon.nl> Received on Sat Jul 10 1999 - 19:09:32 GMT