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Re: [OT] Droit d'auteur vs. free software?



Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> writes:

> Scripsit Thomas Bushnell, BSG
> 
> > The whole European concept of "author's rights" makes me sick;
> 
> If you insist on misunderstanding the concept in the face of sevral
> attempts to explain to you that you're misunderstanding it, then it is
> certainly your democratic right to let your own delusions about a
> concept you refuse to understand make you sick.

What, exactly, is supposed to be the content of the right, the part
that an artist *cannot* renounce?

You are saying that the artist can, in fact, renounce everything, when
the law says that somethings cannot be renounced.  Which is it?

As I read the law, it says that there are some rights over the work
which the artist *cannot* renounce.  You would have it that if the
artist uses a certain form of license, the rights have been
effectively renounced.  If that were a correct interpretation, then
there would be nothing that cannot be renounced.

The purpose of the law is, for example, to say that if an artist sells
a painting, the purchaser cannot tear it up, destroy it, sprinkle more
paint across the surface, and the like.  A recent post also gave the
example of an architect, who can prevent the homeowner from making
changes that violate the "integrity" of his work.

Now the law says that the artist *cannot* relinquish this right.  He
has a *permanent* right to prevent such things being done with his
work, and that this *permanent* right is one that his heirs can
inherit.  The law says that the artist *cannot* sell this right.  He
has it *no matter what*.

Now you are saying that if the artist releases the work under a free
software license, he has in effect relinquished those rights which the
law says he cannot.  



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