[pp.int.general] Purpose of copyright

[Carlos Ayala]

----- Mensaje original ----

De: Richard M. Stallman <rms at gnu.org>
Enviado: domingo, 24 de agosto, 2008 7:34:53
> > Thank you for letting us know. I was quite shocked to see this wording, and I have immediately
> > changed it to say "find a balance between the interests of cultural creators and the general
> > population".
> Many people say that, but I've argued 
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html) that it is a mistake to speak of a
> balance between these interests

Glad to be able to debate with you, Mr Stallman.

In that link, you talk about US Constitution, and that's fine. However, if we look at UDHR, article 27, we can see

- a statement about citizens' rights regarding culture (27.1)
- a statement about author's rights (27.2)

an article which cannot be overlooked ... we're talking about human rights; actually that article can be viewed as one of main strong arguments in favour of free non-commercial culture sharing. It requires balance but between authors and citizens, not between publishers and citizens -nowadays this is unbalanced against citizens and not for authors but for publishers-.

Furthermore, in your link it's correctly stated that while laws formally grant "copyright powers to authors", "in
practice, authors typically cede them to publishers; it is usually the
publishers, not the authors, who exercise these powers and get most of
the benefits, though authors may get a small portion.  Thus it is
usually the publishers that lobby to increase copyright powers". However, remember what you said in your former mail -"If we think that it is not solely an economic issue, we might do well to avoid the term "consumers""-; as long as you were right in being careful with chosen words, we should have to do the same when talking about author's rights.

I think that talking about author's rights in an unpersonal manner (copyright) helps those who lobby to both make those rights become in practice alienated by publishers and make them increase, because helps having the wrong idea of such rights being transferable -helping thus to alienate them in favour of publishers like you accurately point-.

In Spanish PIRATA we don't have problem with most authors -only with 500-1000 who constitute the lobby PAZ which is behind the private copying levies, the legal prosecution of bloggers, filesharers, etc-; we see it as Piratpartiet originally saw it -there can always be some nuances but the main idea is kept-:

- non-commercial sharing should be free from day one
- shortening commercial author's rights term
- file sharing and p2p networking should be encouraged rather than criminalized

while adding another essential point: rejecting a rights management model where authors are forced to transfer
those rights under harmful conditions to their own interests, bringing authors instead the right to choose between self-managing their own performance
rights or choosing to work with one of several performance rights
organisations. In Spain, biggest RMO (SGAE) contains the Big Four within its board, and it's obvious that you cannot assign wolves the task of caring about sheeps.

As a conclussion:

- as long as there are both human rights regarding author's and citizen's rights regarding culture, actually there have to be a balance between them; citizens, not consumers, and authors, not publishers
- nowadays there is an unbalanced scenario favouring not authors, but publishers; this would require
* give back to citizens what was unfairly taken
* also give back to authors what was unfairly taken ... though not by citizens -victims of this cultural system as well-, but by publishers.

Regards,


                                                                Carlos Ayala
                                                                ( Aiarakoa )

                                          Partido Pirata National Board's Chairman


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