[pp.int.general] copyright vs. "droit d'auteur"

Carlos Ayala Vargas aiarakoa at yahoo.es
Wed Jan 7 19:36:04 CET 2009


Per von Zweigbergk wrote:
> You mention mistranslation as a political tool.
I just mention it as one example of the effects of the willing 
distortion of intellectual works. However there are other effects, and 
also effects of unwilling distortions.
> 7 jan 2009 kl. 15.59 skrev Carlos Ayala Vargas:
>> I think you both think of commercial issues. What about the very 
>> meaning of the intellectual works, e.g., books and music lyrics?
> Yes, the meaning of commercial works can be distorted. And to great 
> effect.
Not commercial: the meaning of intellectual works. i.e., I say "/Monica 
Bellucci es una bella mujer/" (Monica Bellucci is a *pretty* woman), and 
someone may translate it as "/Monica Bellucci est une petite femme/" 
(Monica Bellucci is a *petty* woman) because of someone making a bad 
translation to English and the French version being translated from 
English one instead of the original one; while in this case it's just a 
typo, /Google Translator House of Horrors/ (xD) is well known, and it 
just talking about unwilling distortions of original works ...
> While this is possible, you're simply not going to be able to prevent 
> stuff like this through copyright law. If a state wants to violate a 
> law, it will.
Supposedly it would serve to prevent stuff like that; I mean, if 
suddenly Spain starts to systematically violate integrity of 
intellectual works -e.g., through a Political Correction Committee (we 
aren't that far ...)- by censoring or mistranslating certain parts of 
those works (and just in case Spanish justice were looking at nowhere, 
unwilling to avoid it), international courts of justice with 
jurisdiction for author's rights cases would be able to punish the 
Spanish government. It is true that any economic punishment to the 
Spanish government actually hurts Spaniards' pockets, though that's 
another story ...
> And with a functioning media and bloggers on the Internet, it would be 
> impossible to get away with something like this in a free society.
Disagree on that.
> In the end, it should not be the role of copyright law to prevent 
> creation of these kinds of works, the problem is unauthorized 
> attribution, not creating an unauthorized derivative work.
I firmly believe that translations are not derivative works, but the 
same work in different languages -some people may think that they're not 
because of the nuances between supposedly same words in different 
languages; however, I think we are talking about mere translations 
(supposedly willing to preserve the original work's meaning)-; if they 
were derivative works, it should be explicitly mentioned -precisely to 
avoid distorted versions being wrongly attributed to the authors of the 
original works-. Regards,


                                                                                           
Carlos Ayala
                                                                                           
( Aiarakoa )

                                                                     
Partido Pirata National Board's Chairman



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