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

[Amelia Andersdotter]

2009/1/7 Anton Tamminen <anton.tamminen at piraattipuolue.fi>:
>
> But this attitude of "protecting cultural values" represents a world view
> stemming from an age when publishing something equals promoted business -
> public and visible affairs, and in that age, it was realistic to enforce,
> because noncommercial publishing was minimal or nonexistent - infringement
> is easily noticed because it is promoted.

That's not entirely true. The collective consciousness of some kind of
"right" to a work that's derived by one's creative activities
stretches a lot further back than even Gutenberg. It's present even in
family heirlooms of bronze age clans (such as clan patterns on axes or
tools, for instance).

That right isn't necessarily economic in any way - it's not the money
you want, when creating a family axe. It's the ability to be
associated with something you're proud of.

I don't agree that that necessarily stops scanlations and other fan
translations of creative works. Cory Doctorow, for instance, promotes
fan translations of his works. Many other authors, or manga
publishers, don't bother searching for and prosecuting everyone who
promote their works. The system with fan translations seems to
cleverly work already, with the exception of JK Rowling and the
Chinese/French translations - and she was criticized heavily for that.

> I fail to see an artist's rational interest in wanting to weed out
> unofficial translations

Artistic pride. Tolkien had rather a lot of it, for instance. And he
wasn't interested in the commercial aspect, he was just grumpy.

With such a large amount of artists choosing to license their works
under open licenses, I fail to see why we should necessarily protect
people who tread on the toes of people with a large artistic pride. It
seems to me this is better suited as a consumer struggle - let
consumers show authors that they get upset when people weed out bad
translations, rather than forcing the authors to oblige.


> "that's my song, I heard it first", "you can't use that word"

A bad translation may very well twist someone's words though.

/amelia