Re: [OT] Droit d'auteur vs. free software?
* Nathanael Nerode <neroden@twcny.rr.com> [030518 22:18]:
> >Why do you think the concept is bogus? In principle I think it's
> >a good idea to have something that prevents others from mutilating
> >my work. The implementation sucks greatly though.
>
> It's bogus because it impinges on free speech and gives heirs of the
> dead rights over the living. (Just like excessive copyright durations
> do, but I digress...)
>
> In the US, I could mutilate your work, but I couldn't pass it off as
> yours (that would be misrepresentation, possibly fraud). If you were
> alive, I couldn't distort it to give you a bad reputation: that
> would be libel or slander, depending. (Dead people have no
> right to defend their reputations in the US.)
>
> That's plenty sufficient to protect authors' reputations and works'
> integrity without the need for an extra bogus 'author's rights' concept.
> I suspect this is why the US was able to say "We protect moral rights
> plenty for Berne."
Please note, that this could also played backward. Why should libel
or slander be extended to the work of the authors?
Consider European tradition are more specific laws. The first person
"stealing" electricity in Germany could AFAIK not be sentenced, because
an abstractum like electric energy was not covered by the law.
(And proper looked at it, there is nothing stolen, with AC not even
the electrons).
Please note that different law systems cathegorize differently.
I for example never understood this bogus "freedom of speech"
covering pornography. The German (I don't how it is handled in
the rest of Europe) "freedom of opinion" granting the right to
have an opinion and express it (or not express it), together with
freedom of press and some other freedoms is the thing I want, not
this overly broad statement. (Which makes it too easy to abuse
it for the wrong things or abolish it in the really important
aspects).
Hochachtungsvoll,
Bernhard R. Link
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