[Cc-ca] The end and beginning of moral rights

Marcus Bornfreund marcus at uottawa.ca
Tue Jul 20 19:35:05 EDT 2004


There will come a time when you believe everything  is finished. That 
will be the beginning.
  - Louis L'Amour

Hi everyone. We here at iCommons Canada have been ruminating on the 
issue of whether or not moral rights should be included in the Canadian 
CC licence as a default protection and have come to what we hope will 
be a reasonable solution. Existing  functionality does not allow a 
creator to choose to retain or waive their moral rights when completing 
the licence generation form. As a result, a moral rights waiver or 
non-waiver must be encoded into the master licence or not mentioned at 
all.

After much discussion with Canadian copyright experts, we are have 
decided to err on the side of greater creator protection by including 
an assertion of moral rights in works licensed under the Canadian 
Creative Commons licence 2.0.

But please don't think that we aren't sensitive to the protection of 
user (downstream creator) interests. In the commons, creators are also 
users and users, creators. We understand the want for legal certainty 
in securing the ability to use, modify and/or redistribute the works 
which will populate the Canadian creative commons. Moreover, at the end 
of the day reasonableness must prevail: protecting creators is 
ultimately just as important as protecting users.

As soon as the infrastructure and our resources allow it, iCommons 
Canada in collaboration with Creative Commons, will implement 
functionality to allow creators to waive in whole, or in part, their 
moral rights. This is a promise. It was never our intention to forever 
insist upon nor ban the waiver of moral rights, we are simply working 
within the existing constraints. We are doing our best.

So let's be reasonable. Let's work with the resources available but, 
most importantly, let's work together in solidarity - that way 
everybody wins.

/Marcus
________________________
Marcus Bornfreund
 
Manager / Part-time Professor:
Law & Technology Program  <http://www.commonlaw.uottawa.ca/tech/>
 
Faculty of Law : Faculté de droit
Common Law Section : Section Common Law
University of Ottawa : Université d'Ottawa
57 Louis Pasteur Street
Ottawa, ON CANADA K1N 6N5
 
t.  613/562-5800 x3299
f.  613/562-5124
e.  marcus at uottawa.ca
 
GPG/PGP Key ID: 39DB1B1D
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