Re: [OT] Droit d'auteur vs. free software?
>Please note, that this could also played backward. Why should libel
>or slander be extended to the work of the authors?
Huh? It's not being extended at all. There's no right of the *work*.
It's simply the right of the *author* not to be defamed. You can do
whatever you want with the work if you don't do it in public, and you
can say whatever you want about the work; it's only false claims about
the *author* that you can't make in public (including implied claims).
>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).
In a common law country, you might not have been able to sentence them
(which is just fine by me -- people shouldn't go to jail for 'stealing'
electricity), but you would always have been able to sue them, and
a judge could always order them to stop and repay costs. Without any
specific statutes at all.
Unfortunately (IMO) we have been on the trend towards codification of
all possible laws for a long time.
How different are things really on the Continent? Is *everthing* codified?
Perhaps it is; I believe the French (Napoleonic Code) system requires
*every* ruling to be based on a specific article of the code.
>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
Uh, it only covers pornography with 'social, literary, or scientific
value', or something like that. (I may have got the phrase wrong.)
That's not bogus at all. Perhaps you disagree with the wide latitude
our courts traditionally give to claims that something has such value
(as do many people, though not me).
>the rest of Europe) "freedom of opinion" granting the right to
>have an opinion and express it (or not express it), together with
Many First Amendement cases on freedom of speech here feature the
anti-freedom people arguing that the speech is worthless and the
pro-freedom people arguing that it's socially valuable precisely because
it expresses an opinion about an important issue. I don't see a difference
between German and American law here, really.
>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).
Anyway, we're getting even further off topic.
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