On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 10:03:02AM +0000, Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS wrote: > Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org>: > > > The Universal Declaration of Human > > Rights[0], adopted by the United Nations in 1948, lists many other > > rights commonly thought of as "natural rights" or "civil rights". > > You'll note that the terms "copyright", "trademark", and "patent" do > > not even appear in this document. That's no accident. > > However, Article 27 contains a part that could easily be interpreted > as referring to copyright and patents: > > (2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and > material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or > artistic production of which he is the author. > > I would be happy to see that part removed, obviously. Yes, someone else pointed that out to me in private mail; I carelessly overlooked it, and I'll admit that justifying my arguments in the context of non-U.S. law and tradition was an afterthought. I guess I should just stick my parochial viewpoint and not so hurriedly try to universalize it. :) I however, I do think this observation is not as destructive to my argument as one may at first think. The terms "copyright", "trademark", and "patent" really *DON'T* appear in the UDHR -- I wasn't wrong about that. Perhaps we need to be thinking about alternative ways to uphold the "protection of the moral and material interests resulting from...scientific, literary or artistic production[s]"? Surely existing copyright, trademark, and patent regimes, to say nothing of "work-for-hire", "paracopyright", and "trade secret" concepts, are not the only ways to give Article 27 force and meaning. In other words, I don't think it *necessarily* follows from Article 27 that we must have a global oligarchic hegemony of media corporations dictating to us what we shall and shall not read, watch, perceive, write, and share with our fellow human being. -- G. Branden Robinson | I just wanted to see what it looked Debian GNU/Linux | like in a spotlight. branden@debian.org | -- Jim Morrison http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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