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

[Reinier Bakels]

Sorry for the turmoil I created. My argument was first and foremost that 
there more under the sun than the economic perspective of copyright. Which 
is now clearly overly dominant - and the prime target of pirates.
The (true) authors imho deserve support for their immaterial (non-economic) 
rights. Including against the rights owners, sometimes. Copyright is often 
used *against*  the actual authors.

Incidentally, the debate may not always be efficient, but imho it is 
relevant to discuss the role of the human rights argument in politics. I am 
also involved in the software patents struggle, and the opponents of 
software patents often use very weak and questionable human rights 
arguments. Well, some of you may say: "Then try harder". But is it helpful 
to try harder if you are in a dead-end street? Isn't it strange to forward 
legal arguments that are never forwarded by lawyers, not even strong critics 
(who do exist!).

Yesterday I reviews different "pirate" manifesto's. The PP International 
manifestor, the Swedish manifesto, and a German manifesto. In my perception, 
the German manifesto is by far the best. A political manifesto imho is a 
promotional text, that should conform to a certain "journalistic" format. 
yest, this has a lot to do with the role of the human rights argument.

reinier





> 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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