Re: CLUEBAT: copyrights, infringement, violations, and legality

[Jakob Bohm <jbj@image.dk>]

On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 10:30:38AM -0500, Bob Hilliard wrote:
>  On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 11:16:24PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> 
> >                                                       Now, then, do
> > you think Euclid held a copyright in the _Elements_?  Did the apostles
> > of Jesus hold a copyright in the gospels?  If so, when did these
> > copyrights expire, or have they?
> 
>      Neither the Ancient Greeks or Romans had copyright provisions in
> their laws.  Anyone was free to copy a work and sell the copies.  In
> both Athens and Rome there were thriving industries based on batteries
> of slaves copying works for sale.  The authors seemed to appreciate
> the exposure thus given to their ideas.  
> 
>      Euclid lived and worked in a Greek culture, under Greek laws.
> The apostles lived and wrote in predominantly Greek cultures, under
> Roman Laws.
> 

I agree!  Which makes them such great examples for testing if
"IP" rights are universal "natural" or "god-given" rights, or
not...

A similar example is whether or not tribes of various native
populations around the world hold or did hold private property
rights on the lands they once occupied, even though their
pre-colonization cultures sometimes had no concept of private
property rights or land ownership.  Both cases illustrate, that
many such "rights" are actually artifacts of the currently
dominant cultures of the world and do come and go with the ages.

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