[pp.int.general] About PP Russia

[Boris Turovskiy]

On 19.02.2010 14:15, Fedor Khod'kov wrote:
> This is bad idea because author's interest not always the same as the
> public; and because no author gave us the authority to speak on behalf
> of them.  One of primary mission of any PP is to explain what people
> defending their right to share information not just freeloaders, they
> actually have legitimate right to do so, whether authors support them or
> not.  You seem to abandon this mission without even trying.
>
> There would be nothing wrong if PPR would go on negotiations with
> authors or their representatives; but on such negotiations PPR should
> advocate on readers' behalf, not try to make itself authors' advocate
> without even asking authors whether they want PPR to be their advocate
> or not.
>    
Yes, that's exactly the problem I, Stanislav and many others have with 
your position - namely that you consider the PP to be a special interest 
group or advocates of users and readers. You call them "the public", 
thus implying that authors are not part of the public and are indeed 
opposed to it.
Moreover, even if we take on the point of view that it's the interest of 
the "public" (in the sense defined above) we should be protecting, it 
still doesn't lead to your conclusions about what we should be calling 
for, as there are two partially conflicting interests in play here: one 
is the wish to have free access to culture and knowledge (which would 
indeed lead to a call for removing all and any copyright restrictions) 
while the other is the wish to be getting new cultural works (which 
means that there has to be some incentives for those creating them).
So - independently of the question whether we explicitly acknowledge 
that authors are no less part of society than users or if we follow your 
argument that those are two distinct, opposing groups - we have to seek 
a balanced copyright legislation, not arrive with slogans like 
"everything has to be for free, and to hell with the consequences, 
whatever they may be".

Best regards,
Boris