Discussion of all things related to Public Domain

[tom poe <tompoe AT renonevada.net>]

Hi:  File this under RIAA motivation for DMCA, CBDTPA and Beyond.  I 
especially like the links that are being made between statements from Eisner, 
regarding being tired of being continually being finessed by the tech 
industry.  I know, I need to find it again to reference it.  I think there's 
one at PC World, but will check.


The quote below is taken from:
http://www.farces.com/stories/storyReader$414
When elephants dance
Posted by Michael Fraase, 3/23/02 at 9:54:46 PM.
- - - snip - - -
Interestingly, the act of using the copy protection technology is much more 
prevalent in Europe. Most European countries, unlike the United States, 
recognize an artist’s “moral rights” in the work they create. 

Moral rights are a package of intellectual property rights granted to the 
original creator of a work, and include: The right of integrity; The right of 
attribution; The right of disclosure; The right to withdraw or retract; The 
right to reply to criticism. 

These moral rights are separate from the economic copyright that these days 
generally transfers from an author to a publisher and they can survive the 
author. The idea originated with the French, who believe that any creative 
work, by definition, includes the personality and character of the author. 
Where copyright is a property right that can be transferred, moral rights are 
part of the author’s personality and character and non-transferable. 

The first two moral rights—the right of integrity and the right of 
attribution—are especially important because they are codified as 
international law in the Berne Convention. The United States claims its 
intellectual property law complies with the Berne Convention, but this is 
just two instances where it doesn’t. 

The most important of these rights is the first, the right of integrity. 
Basically it prohibits an author’s work from being distorted in any way that 
would harm the author’s reputation and dates to the 1957 French law of “droit 
au respect de l'oeuvre.” It’s a safe bet that a cross-reference over which 
the author had no control would be seen as a distortion of the work. 

Seemingly, in Europe at least, an artist could make an argument against the 
production of a copy-protected version of her work on the sole basis of moral 
rights. Especially in the case of an audio CD to which distortion is 
intentionally added by the publisher. 
-------------------------------------
For an interesting exercise, try this site for determining what royalties 
means to today's artists:
http://www.mosesavalon.com/marc.htm
"90% of artists on major labels don't sell more than 150,000 records."

Well, looks like we make a stop at the Berne Convention.  
Thanks,
Tom