[pp.int.general] "Natural" law

[Reinier Bakels]

> > Perhaps the essence of the human rights argument is that it is not 
> > entirely nonsensical to advocate a strong copyright and tough 
> > enforcement sacrificing privacy - i.e. objectives 180 degrees contrary 
> > to "pirate" objectives, based on human rights. Why not? Respected 
> > writers voice such opinions in the professional liteture.
> If those respected writers voice such opinions, then those respected 
> writers, first of all, are giving twisted interpretations from what human 
> rights are -as you say, interpretations 180º contrary to PPI goals-; and 
> thus, are not respected by me anymore.
Oops, they will be very concerned, not to be respected anymore by Carlos 
Ayala! I am afraid the actucal dynamics of the emergence of opinionsand 
their support works differently. This is complicated, no one really 
understands, professors are asked, and politicians add arguments. The PP is 
heard, at least in Sweden, but not decisive (yet!)
(SNIP)
>
> Of course I don't use only SC & UDHR: LISI law -allowing censorship in the 
> Internet without legal warrant in certain cases- parallels quite much the 
> Francoist 1966's press law -i.e., new dog but same collar-; SGAE's lack of 
> inner democracy parallels the /caciqueism/ phenomenom of Spanish XIXth 
> century countryside areas, usually also associated with census 
> suffrage -actually it is census suffrage, as only SGAE members with 
> highest incomes have right to vote (being able to concentrate up to 20 
> rights to vote), what provokes that only a 33 % of members have right to 
> vote and only 1 % of members concentrates more than 51 % of rights to 
> vote-.
>
> I don't know if you enjoy these examples, there are many more.
Yes, I like that type of argument.
>
> The problem is that currently doesn't matter how effective (i.e., 
> convincing) are my arguments with the people aware of such clashes, as 
> long as there aren't quite much people aware of such clashes -they haven't 
> been on prime time TV shows, but on blogs and forums with relatively 
> little audience-.
Yes, the lack of visibility is a prime problem. Awareness is the start of 
everything.
> > An example. the Dutch parliament questioned the competence of the EU in 
> > the field of criminal measures against intellectual property 
> > infringement (IPRED2, for insiders). It engaged some specialised 
> > attorneys who wrote a thorough and watertight argument. European 
> > Commisioner Frattini decided to fight tjhis firght on his own 
> > battlefield, and responded by a tearjerking letter referring to child 
> > labour, terrorism and casualties due to fake medicines. Dreadful, but 
> > first class typical political rhetoric.
> Child labour -used with /authentic/ works by brands which manufacture 
> their products in third world countries-, terrorism -not avoided (think of 
> 11-M, London and Madrid's T-4 bombings) by measures like data retention 
> which, instead, brings us closer to the Big Brother state- and casualties 
> due to fake medicines -lower than casualties due to lack of medicines (due 
> to defective patent systems)-. Anything else?
We can agree that the arguments are nonsensical. Some of my friends argued 
that fake pills are dangerous because the manufacturers avoid patent 
infringement! If a patient really needs a medicine, a fake pill without the 
active substance can be fatal - but it does not infringe a patent! While I 
don't believe that politicians are really stupid, they are amazingly willing 
to accept nonsense, as long as it fits their position. During the debate in 
our parliament about the implementation of the data retention directive an 
opposition member argued that Skype and Hotmail are outside the scope anyway 
(so that only stupid terrorists will be caught by this measure). But then 
someone of the government coalition asked the minister to do his best to 
cover those "white spots" as well - and that was it. Another story, perhaps 
with a less obvious conclusion: the story goes that criminals from the drugs 
scene converted to fake DVD trade: more profitable and less likely to be 
caught. But isn't this good for social health? Tough copyright enforcement 
will increase the number of drug addicts again ...

But I actually quoted the IPRED2 case because it shows that watertight legal 
arguments simply are ignored by politicians. And human rights arguments may 
suffer the same fate, I am afraid.

> > Of course, everybody is in favour of human rights. But interpretations 
> > differ - even among respected people!
> Yes, they differ: there are accurate, inaccurate and even twisted 
> interpretations; and finally, there are Franco Frattini's.

No, that is something else. Franco Frattini simply ignored ghe legal 
argument. I referred to law professors who interpret human rights provisions 
in a pirata-adverse manner. In particular you favourite UNDR provision is 
easily interpreted that way. It is basically the philosophy of John Locke 
(1632-1704). But I read somewhere that his philosophy is so vague that it 
can be interpreted in any desirable way ...

Frankly, I believe that there is a lot of *obvious* and factual nonsense 
about copyright (etc.) that is much easier to address than complicated 
matters such as the interpretation of provisions of international treaties 
in the field of human rights and other fields.

reinier