From owner-freebsd-chat Wed Mar 7 0:30:40 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from smtp03.primenet.com (smtp03.primenet.com [206.165.6.133]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C743137B71F for ; Wed, 7 Mar 2001 00:30:35 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from tlambert@usr05.primenet.com) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by smtp03.primenet.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id BAA04649; Wed, 7 Mar 2001 01:27:20 -0700 (MST) Received: from usr05.primenet.com(206.165.6.205) via SMTP by smtp03.primenet.com, id smtpdAAAHFa4dj; Wed Mar 7 01:27:15 2001 Received: (from tlambert@localhost) by usr05.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id BAA13983; Wed, 7 Mar 2001 01:30:27 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <200103070830.BAA13983@usr05.primenet.com> Subject: Re: Stallman stalls again To: dot@dotat.at (Tony Finch) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 08:30:27 +0000 (GMT) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert), freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <20010307032352.R412@hand.dotat.at> from "Tony Finch" at Mar 07, 2001 03:23:52 AM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > >Authors do not have moral rights > > Yes they do: "moral rights" is the terminology used in copyright law, > where it means "Supported by reason or probability; practically > sufficient; -- opposed to {legal} or {demonstrable}; as, a moral > evidence; a moral certainty" (Webster's), the point being that the > legal rights are derived from underlying moral rights. > > This terminology doesn't seem to be used in US law, although it is > used in the Berne Convention, and British, Australian, and Canadian > copyright law, and probably many others. I guess that's because the other countries don't want to promote progress in the useful arts and sciences. 8-). That's as it may be in other countries, but U.S. law acknowledges no "moral rights" to accompany authorship. The closest parallel in U.S. law is the acknowledgement of "unalienable rights" (none of which include rights related to authorship). Inalienable rights are considered to be rights which can not be divorced from the condition of being human: those rights which one can not give away or otherwise have removed from them. Moral rights are profoundly different, in that they are granted by society, and society may place limitations on them. Realize that the U.S. Constitution doesn't use this language directly itself; it is the declaration of independence which makes the claim: We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. ...in other words, the United States is very different from most countries in its fundamental basis for law. I guess the easiest way to reconcile this is that in the U.S., the legal rights are granted, whereas in countries where it is a moral right, the government has the ability to abridge them. Your point about the Berne convention and other treaties is well taken: people who wish to reform U.S. intellectual property law need to realize that the U.S. is still bound by treaty to uphold the intellectual property law of other treaty signatories. This basically means that even if the U.S. were to, say, abolish the patent system entirely, people could still file patents in foreign countries, which the U.S. would be treaty bound to enforce. So "fixing" U.S. IP law is not the "piece of cake" some would make it out to be. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message