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

[Per von Zweigbergk]

8 jan 2009 kl. 10.08 skrev Reinier Bakels:

> Somehow the difficulty is that copyright protects works of art with  
> a very small "a" to works of art with a very large "A", from the  
> users manual of a hard disk recorder to a Nobel prize winning novel,  
> and the cultural effect of bad adaptations etc. varies accordingly.

Law shouldn't be an art critic. Law shouldn't decide how big the "A"  
in Art is and apply different restrictions accordingly. And even if it  
could I find it counterproductive and even offensive to even try to  
restrict the free creation of noncommercial derivative works. As I  
said earlier, the author has no inalienable right not to be offended.  
That's why we have specific laws permitting parody.

> Frankly, I would appreciate a "moral" right of the author to decide  
> on the use of his work after the term for commercial exploitation  
> has expired, in particular if that is shortened to five years, as PP  
> proposes. How could open source software licences (GNU) otherwise be  
> properly protected? Bill Gates stole Dos from the QDOS developers,  
> he stole Windows from IBM, why wouldn't he steal Linux and add some  
> bells and whistles to create an even more attractive properietary  
> version?


If Bill Gates can take five year old GNU technology and turn it into a  
proprietary product more successful than its current Windows line --  
why not let him try? Five years is a long time in software development.

But maybe 5 years is a too short time for you. Maybe 10 years is  
better? If Microsoft came out with a proprietary product based on 10  
years old GNU, they'd be laughed out of the marketplace for trying to  
sell such obsolete software.

Any commercial software developer has much more to gain by working  
within the restrictions of the limited rights granted by the GPL, and  
thus produce more Free Software, than to appropriate software from the  
public domain.

(That, or they could just base their system on BSD-licensed software.  
I recall hearing about a computer company based in Cupertino,  
California that went that route and have been fairly successful.)

Maybe copyright reform makes the GPL a bit weaker, but I think the  
tradeoff is worth it. And while protection of the authors moral  
"rights" might be nice to have, if you're an author, it's simply  
incompatible with the idea of broader imaginary property reform for  
the 21st century.
-- 
Per von Zweigbergk

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