On the topic of the Berne Convention, which is the 'original' and
enduring document of copyright, it is important to remember that, like
any convention, it established a set of premises that were then
supposed to be translated into law in its signatory countries. Are the
base premisses of the Berne convention broken. Or is it that our
individual nation states are interpreting them in a limited fashion.
Take for example:
Article 2 pt 3
Translations, adaptations, arrangements of music and other alterations
of a literary or artistic work
shall be protected as original works without prejudice to the
copyright in the original work.
Isn't a Mash up, or reuse of material a translation, adaptation or
arrangement? The convention allows enough room for these activities to
be permissable.
It is important not to throw out the remises of the convention because
their interpretation is narrow. One of the things that the convention
served to do was assert the artist's moral rights to a work they
created.
Article 6 pt 1
Independently of the author’s economic rights, and even after the
transfer of the said rights, the author
shall have the right to claim authorship of the work and to object to
any distortion, mutilation or other
modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to, the said
work, which would be prejudicial to his
honor or reputation.
In the field of visual arts this has been used to prevent the
destruction or alteration of an artwork, especially in the cases of
permanent sculptures in the public and corporate domains. In this case
it is generally up to the artist to make a decision that the change
in their work contravenes their moral rights. And in creating new
copyright legislation we do not want to generate a situation where the
artist loses their moral rights to their own work.
Also looking at Article 9. The Berne Convention states that it is up
to the artist authorise the reproduction of their work.
(1) Authors of literary and artistic works protected by this
Convention shall have the exclusive right of
authorizing the reproduction of these works, in any manner or form.
(2) It shall be a matter for legislation in the countries of the Union
to permit the reproduction of such
works in certain special cases, provided that such reproduction does
not conflict with a normal exploitation
of the work and does not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate
interests of the author.
I agree that the artist must have the right to chose if their work
is available for open use or protected. And the default decision
should be 'protected', otherwise we will have a situation where
emerging artists, unaware of their rights lose their protections by
not knowing they need to assert their copyright. Giving a creative
commons licence is a statement of authorisation and something like
that should be available and standardised in law.
The last time the Berne convention was amended was in 1979. Maybe it
is due for an amendment again. But not if it becomes more restrictive.
These included not
On 15/07/2009, at 1:31 AM, Julian Oliver wrote:
..on Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 03:13:35PM +0200, adam hyde wrote:
On Tue, 2009-07-14 at 14:54 +0200, Julian Oliver wrote:
It depends how you look at it. All a copyright license covers are
the terms of
copying and downstream distribution. If a license says "you're
allowed to
relicense, copy and claim full authorship for my work" it's still
a license,
just a very open and rather pointless one. Without copyright (as
'naturalised'
from authorship by the Berne convention or otherwise) there would
certainly be
very little cultural production: we wouldn't have a history of art
as made by
artists, as work would be re-attributed at whim. Citation would be
extremely
difficult - thus the derivative work - and so it follows that
concepts as
posited by people, as objects of thought, would lose their
vernacular, critical
and cultural power.
im not sure i agree...Berne was sometime in the late 1900s...
The Berne convention was established in 1886. Alot happened before
then of
course. In Europe authors rights were handballed between the church
and the
state, without the separation of which there wouldn't be a concept
like
copyright at all.
All 'Copyright' does is affirm that the creator of a work has the
right to
decide how that work can be distributed and used by others. The form
that
decision takes, the License part, is another thing entirely.
do u think
we had no history of art or cultural production before then? we
seem to
have quite a rich knowledge of artists pre 1900s. If you take
copyright
back further to british law we are talking sometime around 1660 - I
think we have maintained a lot of the vernacular, critical and
cultural
power of the Renaissance (which more or less ended before copyright
was
a legal notion), for example...
For sure, copyright very much existed before the 1880s. However,
international
protection of authors rights was affirmed and given legal protection
in the
1880s.
"The 1886 Berne Convention first established recognition of
copyrights among
sovereign nations, rather than merely bilaterally. Under the Berne
Convention,
copyrights for creative works do not have to be asserted or
declared, as they
are automatically in force at creation. In these countries, there
is no
requirement for an author to "register" or "apply for" a copyright,
or to mark
his or her works with a copyright symbol or other legend. As soon
as a work is
"fixed", that is, written or recorded on some physical medium, its
author is
automatically entitled to all copyrights in the work, and to any
derivative
works unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them, or
until the
copyright expires."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
so i really dont think this marriage of copyright to attribution or
cultural development holds. In fact, I would say that copyright has
killed attribution in many ways as copyright attributes credit to the
people that pay for the work. Who holds the copyright for Walt Disney
films? Certainly not the creators, but the Disney Corporation...
I think you're mixing the license with the concept here. Copyright
licenses,
like people, come in many shapes, sizes and dispositions. There are
pro-culture
copyright licenses, like that Lawrence Lessig and Richard Stallman
have created,
and then others, like those that give the RIAA federal rights to carry
submachineguns and fly black helicopters.
As far as i see it, its hard to say copyright is pro-culture. You can
say culture hasn't completely died under copyright. I would agree
with
this. But it hasn't helped.
Copyright is just a concept, and there's nothing wrong with the
concept in
itself IMHO..
Cheers,
Julian
Copyright can be pro-culture - it's just that /most/ copyright is
broken,
perverted by the 'free' market - exploited to the contrary.
However, regardless of my beliefs, the position of saying
copyright is
broken is more provocative and might encourage more people to think
about it than taking a position on the wording of legislation.
It may do that, yep, as long as people are educated as to the
options otherwise.
As it stands I come across a lot of people that claim there is
only Copyright
(aka RIAA style) and Public Domain, which reflects a gross lack of
education on
the topic..
Cheers,
Julian
On Tue, 2009-07-14 at 11:28 +0200, Julian Oliver wrote:
..on Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 10:44:23PM +0200, adam hyde wrote:
hey
on the copyright issue ...
i think it would be a good opportunity to provoke people to
think about
copyright - to release a statement way outside of the arguments
of this
debate, and go for the throat. in my mind that is a statement
outlining
that we think the current debate is ridiculous because
copyright is
broken and useless.
so, perhaps the position to take, and one that might provoke
people to
think and might also catch some news-space, is to tell people
that we
dont want copyright at all...
Hrmm.. as you (very) well know there is nothing wrong with
copyright in itself,
in fact copyright can't be avoided. Since the 1886 Berne
convention it's been a
naturally assigned right at the point of creating something: you
can't
not-have-made something you've already made. It's the terms of
which that are
later defined and it's here that problems propogate..
There are socially destructive forms of copyright and socially
creative forms of
copyright. The GPL is very much a copyright license as are all
the creative
commons licenses (as you know), both of which were created to be
productive at
the user level.
The difference between socially destructive copyright (no right
to remix / no
right to learn from / what you buy is not yours to share) and
socially
productive/creative copyright (right to remix, modify,
distribute) needs to be
emphasised.
To these ends I think one of the terms that really needs to be
squashed is
'CopyLeft'; it implies that Creative Commons and the GPL are
somehow
'anti-copyright' which is far from the case. This confuses
people greatly and
only serves to undermine any real education on positive, albeit
reformist,
directions in policy that benefit the public in general.
Cheers,
Julian
On Sun, 2009-07-12 at 14:46 +1200, Douglas Bagnall wrote:
hello list.
You have probably heard of fuss over "section 92a", a proposed
amendment
to copyright law that would allow for your internet connection
to be cut
when someone says you are using it piratically. It got passed
as law,
put on hold, thrown out, and is now perhaps fighting its way
back.
Throughout all of this ADA has had no position. It seems to
me that we
share considerable membership (that's you list subscribers)
with the
Creative Freedom Foundation who led the battle against section
92 -- but
we probably also share members with APRA and SPADA who
supported the
proposal. So if we do take a position, it is not immediately
clear what
it should be.
The CFF and its opponents are being terribly pragmatic and
tactical in
what they call for. They are fighting over what the actual law
will look
like, letter by letter. Personally I'm in favour of a far
more anarchic
situation than anything the CFF dares advocate. I understand
their
reasons, of course, but it makes me wonder: if ADA expresses
an official
opinion, should it be unashamedly fringe? Should put out
press releases
like they did manifestos 100 years ago?
Probably nothing will come of this. I'm just curious as to
whether ADA
members want their trust to be making statements on stuff like
this, and
if so, what they want said.
Douglas
_______________________________________________
Ada_list mailing list
[email protected]
http://aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/
--
Adam Hyde
Founder FLOSS Manuals
German mobile : + 49 15 2230 54563
Email : [email protected]
irc: irc.freenode.net #flossmanuals
"Free manuals for free software"
http://www.flossmanuals.net/about
_______________________________________________
Ada_list mailing list
[email protected]
http://aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/
--
Adam Hyde
Founder FLOSS Manuals
German mobile : + 49 15 2230 54563
Email : [email protected]
irc: irc.freenode.net #flossmanuals
"Free manuals for free software"
http://www.flossmanuals.net/about
_______________________________________________
Ada_list mailing list
[email protected]
http://aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/
--
Adam Hyde
Founder FLOSS Manuals
German mobile : + 49 15 2230 54563
Email : [email protected]
irc: irc.freenode.net #flossmanuals
"Free manuals for free software"
http://www.flossmanuals.net/about
_______________________________________________
Ada_list mailing list
[email protected]
http://aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/
--
Julian Oliver
home: New Zealand
based: Madrid, Spain
currently: Madrid, Spain
about: http://julianoliver.com
_______________________________________________
Ada_list mailing list
[email protected]
http://aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/
Melissa Laing
[email protected]
www.melissalaing.com
_______________________________________________
Ada_list mailing list
[email protected]
http://aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/
