<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On 29 Jul 2009, at 15:53, Philip Hunt wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite"><div><br>And make no mistake, Berne is a bad treaty that needs to be abolished.<br>A copyright term of life plus 50 years is far too long.<br></div></blockquote></div><br><div>Forgive the pedantry, but I think you mean that the convention needs to be reformed or superseded, not abolished. The Berne convention was not all bad, and brought about some improvements over the pre-existing national laws. For example, it oriented the rights to be more in favour of creators, and less focused on the interests of publishers. One aspect of this was that creators had rights simply as a result of creating, without needing to register their work in order to secure those rights. Abolition implies reverting to a hotchpotch of national laws and bilateral treaties, and that may have lots of undesirable consequences. One challenge for this fledgling international movement is working out, amongst ourselves, what a Berne mk.2 would look like.</div><div><br></div><div>Best regards,</div><div><br></div><div>Eric</div><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; ">Eric Priezkalns </span></div><div apple-content-edited="true"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; ">Treasurer<br>Pirate Party UK <br>+44 7958 467273 <br><a href="mailto:treasurer@pirateparty.org.uk">treasurer@pirateparty.org.uk</a><br></span></div><div><br></div></div></div></div><div><br></div></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br></body></html>