[pp.int.general] Author's rights are, indeed, human rights

[Carlos Ayala]

Recently and regarding author's rights, a little busy bee :) found and sent me a very worthy UN paper on author's rights, written in 2005 by the Economic and Social Council, which beyond any reasonable doubt proves that author's rights are indeed human rights, according to article 27 UDHR and article 15.1.c of the Covenant; also, it proves that so-wrongly-called intellectual propertyis not a human right -obviously comes that author's rights and intellectual property are not the same thing (furthermore, when we answered EC Consultation on Levies, in PPI already we stated that such thing actually is a fiction)-; that levies can be removed; that material author's rights lifespan can be shortened even shorter than author's life; and some other interesting facts, even showing UN meanest face -referenced paragraphs are from the forementioned UN paper-:

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Estatutos aprobados por el M.I. el 24/01/2007  
Basic facts concerning author's rights
	* according to UN, author's rights are human rights, while intellectual propertyis not (paragraphs 1 & 2)
	* author's rights are entitled to authors, so-wrongly-called intellectual propertyis entitled to corporate and business interests; whoever -e.g., RMOs- defending defienda intellectual propertyarguing that it's meant to defend authors' interests, simply lies	(paragraph 2); actually, a legal entity can never, for obvious reasons, become human rights -like author's rights- holder (paragraph 7)
	* author's rights, right to take part in cultural life and the freedom indispensable for creative activity are at the same time mutually reinforcing and reciprocally limitative (paragraph 4); actually, the five core obligations concerning the protection of author's rights, according to UN, are the following (paragraph 39):
	* to take legislative and other necessary steps to ensure the effective protection of author's rights
	* to protect moral interests: authorship and cultural work integrity
	* to respect and protect basic material interests of authors, necessary according to UN to enable those authors to enjoy an adequate standard of living
	* to ensure equal access for authors to appropriate remedies enabling them to seek and obtain redress in case their rights have been infringed
	* to strike an adequate balance between author's rights and the rest of human rights


Facts concerning how to redefine author's rights

	* as long as authors can only benefit from the protection of the interests directly generated by their cultural works (paragraph 17), protection of author's rights is not unlimited, but must be balanced with the other human rights recognized in the Covenant (paragraph 22), and levies are based on the idea of forcing whoever making unauthorized usage of cultural works to compensate their authors for any unreasonable prejudice caused by that usage(paragraph 31), levies have no reason to exist; no prejudice actually exists, nor levies are actually collected proportionally according to the usage of specific works by specific users, nor specific authors receive proportionalincomings according to the usage of their works, nor there is a way to find out the forementioned without infringing other human rights like privacy
	* the term of protection of material interests of authors need not extend over the entire lifespan of the author (paragraph 16), but it just has to last enough to ensure authors the enjoyment of an adequate standard of living (paragraph 15)

	* limitations on author's rights (paragraph 22) must be determined by law in a compatible way with the very nature of those rights, to pursue a legitimate aim, to be strictly necessary for the promotion of the general welfare in a democratic society; and to be proportionate, that is, the least restrictive measures must be adopted when several types of limitations may be imposed
	* the private interests of authors should not be unduly favoured (paragraph 35)
	* according to the forementioned, and as long as UN allows retrogressive measures regarding author's rights if the State party which propose such measures proves that they come after careful consideration of all alternatives and that they are duly justified in the light of the totality of the human rights recognized in the Covenant (paragraph 27), the term of material author's rights can be shortened falling considerably below current term and even maybe not extending over the entire lifsepan of the author, levies can be fully eliminated, and free non-commercial filesharing can be enabled -as long as we consider that non-commercial filesharing causes no prejudice to be compensated-

UNfair stances


	* UN pretends countries seize author's rights from the individual or collective authorship of indigenous peoples under national intellectual propertyregimes; to prevent everyone the unauthorized usage of those indigenous cultural works, oral tradition and traditional knowledge, claiming compensation in exchange for the authorization of such usage; and providing for the collective administration by indigenous peoples -i.e., not the peoples but the governments, the public offices- of the benefits derived from their productions (paragraph 32); to see the unfairness of this, think of our will to reduce material rights' term and now think of centuries, even millennium-lasting traditional knowledge, oral tradition and cultural works being turned into intellectual property ...

	* while protecting author's rights cannot be allowed discrimination against individual authors; however, UN remains silent when RMOs like SGAE (Spain) or SACEM (France) abuse authors in a way that, if those authors don't join them, law makes those authors de factolose some of their author's rights regardless of being totally theirs	(paragraph 44)
	* UN thinks that what matters is to create a favourable climate for author's rights, to ensure tha tcivil society is aware of the importance of such rights (paragraph 48); UN, however, forgets that if to preserve such rights, if taking part of cultural life, privacy and other human rights are infringed, the mood of the civil society towards this issue makes a negative turn

	* in spite of UN not thinking of intellectual propertyas a human right, nor equating it to author's rights, UN assigns the World Intellectual Property Organization -UN-depending- the duty of monitoring obligations of State parties concerning author's rights (paragraph 49); this results to be a really huge show of hypocresy, because if intellectual property is something meant to serve corporate and business interests, while author's rights are human rights which authors are entitled to, to assign WIPO the duty of monitoring author's rights is same thing as making wolves to shepherd sheepsRegards,


                                                                 Carlos Ayala
                                                                 ( Aiarakoa )

                                           Partido Pirata National Board's Chairman

Tomorrow, I'll write an alternative amendment to Third Amendment; Hoshpak did a great job in finding a mistaken concept -authors are also citizens-, however it can be fixed while preserving the original wording's essence -which was and is accurate according to this UN paper-.



      
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