Fytton Rowland wrote:
> Copyright is, I believe, significantly different in the UK and the USA. In
> the UK, as Iain says, copyright exists as soon as a text is written by its
> author, whether it is published or not. In the USA, copyright has to be
> registered.
Used to be. We signed Berne, but the nature of our accession to its terms
is not of the nature of Civil Code notions of "moral rights." We maintain
that other statutes such as libel, etc. cover that area.
> In Europe there are moral rights (such as the right to be
> identified as the author of your work) which remain with the author even if
> the copyright is transferred to another.
>
> If something has been placed in the public domain, anyone may use it for any
> purpose whatsoever without reference to the author. Academic authors who
> favour Open Access are definitionally happy for anyone to read, download and
> print off their scholarly papers free of charge. However, I for one would
> be unhappy if a publisher were to take one of my (free) papers off the WWW
> and include it in a collection of some sort which is then sold, without any
> reference to me. I would not necessarily want any money but I'd like to be
> asked! So I think authors are well advised to assert copyright in their
> material even if they intend to allow unlimited free access to it.
The real bugbear comes up when a "moral right of integrity" is coupled with
things like the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, which declares that
"DRM metadata" must be adhered to -- essentially eliminating the public's
fundamental right to make use of published information, in favor of making
exclusive rights primary, which in the US are simply a product of statute,
granted by Congress in service of the progress of the useful arts and
sciences.
"Christopher D. Green" wrote:
>
> Fytton Rowland wrote:
>
> > Copyright is, I believe, significantly different in the UK and the USA. In
> > the UK, as Iain says, copyright exists as soon as a text is written by its
> > author, whether it is published or not. In the USA, copyright has to be
> > registered.
>
> This has not been true for many years now. See p.3 col. 2 of
> http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15a.pdf
>
> > In Europe there are moral rights (such as the right to be
> > identified as the author of your work) which remain with the author
> > even if the copyright is transferred to another.
>
> And a very sensible system this is, which the US should adopt. Giving up
> ownership need not entail giving up authorship.
One understands that the publisher/individual author divide is addressed by
this formulation, yet both sides of that debate often have a similar
shortsightedness -- or misconception regarding from whence exclusive rights
derive. Indeed, those who would attempt to impose technological controls on
supposedly published information, are only too pleased to see the individual
author side take up camp under this banner. The "moral right of integrity"
is easily misapplied (and has already been by WIPO), though the "moral right
of attribution" does not pose such a problem.
Seth
--
DRM is Theft! We are the Stakeholders!
New Yorkers for Fair Use
http://www.nyfairuse.org
[CC] Counter-copyright: http://realmeasures.dyndns.org/cc
I reserve no rights restricting copying, modification or distribution of
this incidentally recorded communication. Original authorship should be
attributed reasonably, but only so far as such an expectation might hold for
usual practice in ordinary social discourse to which one holds no claim of
exclusive rights.
Received on Sat Jan 17 2004 - 12:12:47 GMT