Anyway, the good old United Kingdom of GB isn't immune from seeing the privilege of suspending the public's liberty to their own culture as the property right of the holy publisher:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmcumeds/509/5091 0.htm "Gowers' analysis was thorough and in economic terms may be correct. It gives the impression, however, of having been conducted entirely on economic grounds. We strongly believe that copyright represents a moral right of a creator to choose to retain ownership and control of their own intellectual property. We have not heard a convincing reason why a composer and his or her heirs should benefit from a term of copyright which extends for lifetime and beyond, but a performer should not. Under the present term, some 7,000 performers, including session musicians and backing singers will, over the next ten years, lose airplay royalties from recordings they made in the late fifties and sixties. They will also no longer benefit from sales just at a time when the long tail enabled by on-line retailing may be creating a market for their product once again. Given the strength and importance of the creative industries in the UK, it seems extraordinary that the protection of intellectual property rights should be weaker here than in many other countries whose creative industries are less successful. We recommend that the Government should press the European Commission to bring forward proposals for an extension of copyright term for sound recordings to at least 70 years, to provide reasonable certainty that an artist will be able to derive benefit from a recording throughout his or her lifetime." The statement "We strongly believe that copyright represents a moral right of a creator to choose to retain ownership and control of their own intellectual property." is reprehensible. Copyright represents nothing of the sort, but the privilege of suspending others' rights to share and build upon the intellectual property they've purchased from the creator. Their statement is suspiciously very close to an ethically sound statement they could have made instead: "We strongly believe that there is a moral right of a creator to choose to retain ownership and control of their own intellectual property." The latter statement should properly be understood as being quite compatible with a purchaser's similar moral right to the intellectual works they purchase, i.e. to choose to retain ownership and control of their own intellectual property. This is how people have been trying to jemmy copyright as a property right, by affixing it as an extension on the moral right to IP and hoping no-one will notice. You have a moral right to own and control the baskets you weave and the pots you throw, but then this doesn't extend into a privilege to own and control that property once you've sold it to someone else. It's then their property, and their right to own and control it. _______________________________________________ fc-uk-discuss mailing list fc-uk-discuss@lists.okfn.org http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/fc-uk-discuss
