Copyright C.P.U.
Harry Hillman Chartrand
Creators, Proprietors & Users" at
http://www.compilerpress.atfreeweb.com/cpu.htm
AW
hints of socialism slowly come out, then checking the links on the site I
find the very well masked Socialist agenda well represented under seemingly
unbiased titles such as "economics". I must say the skill of the writer(s)
on this site is stellar. The socialist propaganda of the 40's 50's and 60's
was easy to see for what it was, this site is masked with an extremely
higher degree of skill. The arguments are subtle, flawed but convincing on
the surface. It purports to want to secure rights of individuals by arguing
against copyright protection and against the right of an author to sell
those rights to a corporation. The authors are certain to deny that this is
their position. As an aspiring writer myself I hope that I will be able to
someday sell my work to some "evil" corporation for the best terms possible.
If I choose to publish my work myself (in the tradition of Ben Franklin and
others of his time) I hope I will still be able to assign the rights to my
work to my family members, for my children and grandchildren (something the
authors of that site rail against). I hope I have not added to the
attention this site gets but I have seen their postings here and finally
looked at the site, I wanted to make public the nature of this supposedly
benevolent site.
Harry Hillman Chartrand
capitalism (unless libertarianism); the site is dedicated to the INDIVIDUAL
(not a collective) in the tradition of the French Republican Revolution.
Sell to the 'evil' corporation, by all means, but retain your 'moral
rights' - imprescriptable, inalienable....
Perhaps it is feudalism you prefer; to pull your forelock and bow down to
the 'Laird' AOL/Time/Warner, News Corporation, Vivendi et al. The founding
fathers of the American Republic knew that this is from whence comes the
Anglo-American tradition of copyright. Unfortunately Thomas Jefferson
failed to prevent these monopolies from reappearing. It is time to complete
the American Revolution - not bow down to new feudal lords nor to some
mythic socialist collective.
Keep writing.
With best wishes, I remain
Yours truly,
Harry Hillman Chartrand
Cultural Economist & Publisher
Compiler Press
compile...@home.com
Compiler Press - Intellectual Property in the Global Village:
http://members.home.net/compilerpress1
Compleat World Copyright Website
http://www.compilerpress.atfreeweb.com
World Cultural Economics Intelligence Network:
http://members.home.net/h-chartrand/
Elementary Economics http://members.home.net/h-chartrand1
AW
point.
OK, so not socialism and not capitalism, what is it you are proposing as the
solution to this?
What exactly would you put in place to replace the current copyright laws?
What specifically would you change, what specifically would you put there to
protect my rights to sell my work, and the right to publish my work. Does
your concept also apply to other property? What about inventions? What
about art?
I am interested in your solutions, but also in what exactly you perceive as
the problem that the solution is needed for.
Harry Hillman Chartrand <h-cha...@home.com> wrote in message
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Harry Hillman Chartrand
Civil Code concepts of the inalienable and imprescriptible rights of the
Creator, i.e. moral rights, being formally entrenched in Anglo-American
Common Law copyright law. The source of creation is the individual human
creator, not the copyright proprietor. This premise is summed up Zechariah
Chaffe's words repeated in the prestigious Great American Law Reviews
(Berring 1984):
. intellectual property is, after all, the only absolute possession in the
world... The man who brings out of nothingness some child of his thought
has rights therein which cannot belong to any other sort of property.
(Chafee 1945)
Alas this philosophical premise is not how copyright law currently
functions. It is a legal fiction I call "The Myth of the Creator". The
reality is 'all rights' or blanket licences and extinction of a creator's
rights at the stroke of a pen. The French Revolution went that extra step
in creating a legal structure of intellectual property rights that actually
reflects Chaffee's words.
Buying and selling of works still occurs (economic rights) but within the
limits of a creator's moral rights. Accession by the United States to the
Berne Convention creates a Trojan Horse within the Common Law tradition. It
offers the opportunity to formally recognize Chaffee's aspirations by
balancing the economic rights of copyright proprietors with the moral rights
of the creator thereby reducing the monopolistic power of proprietors.
To date the only real winner from accession to the Berne Convention has been
Mickey Mouse's owners - the Disney Corporation. It will be another 25 years
before Mickey can play in the 'public domain' and it was the public domain
as well as the rights of creators that fueled both the Statute of Queen Anne
(the first copyright law to recognize creators had any rights) and the
intellectual property rights clause of the American Constitution.
It is time to realize that Thomas Jefferson was right and James Mason was
wrong. Copyright has become the legal foundation for the industrial
organization of the art/entertainment industry, not an effective incentive
to creativity nor a means to expand the public domain. Formal recognition
of a creator's moral rights would do much to redress the imbalance in
bargaining power.
I hope this answers your query.
All the best.
HHC
AW
Though the prose are quite impressive, just how you have answered my
questions eludes me. Are you saying that copyrights should not all be
sellable? Whatever it is you are saying why can't you come right out and
say it?
In case my questions were missed I will repeat them here.
1)What exactly would you put in place to replace the current copyright laws?
2)What specifically would you change, what specifically would you put there
to
protect my rights to sell my work, and the right to publish my work.
3)what exactly you perceive as the problem that your solution is needed for.
It may be that you have answered these questions and that I am just not
intellectually up to the challenge of discerning the answers from within
your learned diatribe. I ask a favor for those of us of simpler minds,
could you use the numbers above to point out to me where you are answering
my questions in your next response.
Thank You, and though my tongue may be somewhat in my cheek, I must say that
I am enjoying our conversation.
Andy
Harry Hillman Chartrand <h-cha...@home.com> wrote in message
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Harry Hillman Chartrand
2. You could (as in Europe today) sell your 'economic rights' to your work
but retain moral rights 'imprescriptible and inalienable'.
3. The American Declaration of Independence holds "all men are created
equal". For purposes of current copyright law "all humans and corporations"
are created equal. This would change. The last legacy of the aristocratic
past "bodies corporate" having the same rights as flesh and blood human
beings would change. A clear distinction between economic rights (available
for sale) and moral rights (not available for sale) would resolve the
problem.
For fuller description of the distinctions above please re-read "Copyright
C.P.U" especially the section on the French Revolution.
AW
My understanding of your position increased to the point that our
disagreement shrinks.
From your copyright C.P.U. I quote
""
Article 11: Inalienable, Unattachable, Impresciptible and Unrenounceable
The author shall have the inalienable, unattachable, imprescriptible and
unrenounceable right:
(a) to keep the work unpublished or to disclose it;
(b) to claim authorship of the work at any time;
(c) to object to any distortion, mutilation or alteration of the work that
is prejudicial to the integrity thereof or to the reputation of the author.
On the author's death, the exercise of moral rights shall pass to his
successors in title for the period referred to in Chapter VI of this
Decision. Once the economic rights have lapsed, the State or designated
agencies shall assume the defense of the authorship and integrity of the
work (Andean Community 1993).
""
This from the "Andean Pact "
On this subject I can see your point, I have often felt that Directors for
instance should have more say as to the final cut on their movies and this
article would seem to support it. So I am not directly opposed to such an
addition to our own copyright laws. Enforceability issues would arise form
it in areas such as film, where one persons work (a book) is rewritten by
another persons work (a screenplay) and is put into another form (a movie)
by yet another person. and some of these people may even be teams of
people. You can see there could be some great complications there, and to
solve them it may require a hard bar of proof on the reputation of the
author issue.
I do object to the state assuming the defense of authorship though. I don't
think that government needs or should have such obligations. It actually
would put them in an even greater position of censorship.
This is one of the subtle points that makes me think you may be pushing for
socialism.
Here you propose taking a right I can assign to someone else (person or
group) and you say I can no longer assign it, I keep it for life... OK so
far I can live with the change, but in the next step you give this
unassignable right to the government (a group) hmmm... Which makes me
wonder about your actual agenda, is it protecting my rights or getting rid
of the rights of corporations (Groups)?
In point 3 of your answer this becomes even more the issue. You refer to
'aristocratic
past "bodies corporate"'. Obviously a thing you detest.
I am no great scholar on the subject but I see corporations as something
more than the vestiges of past aristocracy. Any group can band together and
for economic reasons form a corporation. This allows them to act as one,
to borrow monies, to sign contracts that live beyond the present leaders of
the group. Governments are such corporations, that is how treaties between
countries can hold past the sitting of a president, prime minister or other
governmental person. The same concept holds for corporations. The XYZ
corp. can contract with PDQ inc to provide a service for a fee. Then when
the president of either dies or leaves the company, business goes on the
contract is not disturbed. I think this one among many good reasons to
keep corporations around.
This talk of corporations brings my attention back to the items 1 and 2
above. You would make my "Moral Rights" Unassignable unsellable... but
give them to the government to sell... What if I wanted to create a group
(most likely a corporation) who would be charged with the duty of keeping my
works pure to the form I had originally intended them. Under your law I
would not be able to do this effectively. The government would control this
issue. I think you might re-look at your position in this light. Do you
really want to remove power form the LITTLE corporations and hand it over to
the BIG corporations (governments)?
Thanks for taking the time to respond to my questions and comments.
Andy
Harry Hillman Chartrand <h-cha...@home.com> wrote in message
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Harry Hillman Chartrand
consider the following. As noted in "Copyright C.P.U." a distinction
between Common Law and Civil Code is that 'moral rights' require the imprint
of personality. Hence with respect to film directors the French have the
'auteur' theory that the director imprints his/her personality on the work
and hence has moral rights. Under Common Law copyright whoever owns the
negative, or organizes the production (producer) owns the copyright. This
leads back to the 'colourization' controversy.
With respect to corporations, they can indeed enjoy 'copyright' as economic
rights under the Civil Code but not 'moral rights'. This is the root of an
ongoing controversy between France and the USA.. Jack Valenti want the
Europeans to grant American corporations the same rights as individual
creators under the Civil Code. The European refuse.
A corporation has no personality; it is a collective. If you are so
concerned about socialism then realize that a corporation is a collective
not a person yet under existing copyright law 'it' has all the rights of a
person. Again it is the individual not the collective - whether government
or 'body corporate' - that should be the focus of our 'creative' concern.
This leads, by the way, in the extreme, to the question of corporations
owning an individual's DNA.
The point of Civil Code 'author's rights' is that they are inherent,
inalienable, etc.. The State is responsible for defending the individual as
the basis of all social life - not the State nor the Corporation. This is,
I believe, the rationale of the American Revolution.
If one believes in the individual then by all means allow for collective,
group action, e.g. limited liability corporations, but do not confuse the
two. Is the individual the root or is the group? Strangely your position
is more socialist than mine. You seemingly are willing to equate the group
with the individual. I am not.
More please!
AW
say about the finished work, I also see the right of the owner of a property
to do as they wish with it. For directors to maintain this right they need
only refuse to sell it when they negotiate their contracts.
Re France and USA not agreeing, I hope they work this disagreement out. But
Frances position is not any more right that USA's position. Is it a
disagreement between France and USA or Europe and USA. I may not be all
that up on international politics but isn't France a very socialistic
country? Which brings us to the last issue in your most recent post...
I need to clarify the difference between 'socialism' in small groups as
opposed to governments. You are right I have no problem with private groups
using socialism, this is what most families use to some degree. It works
for families and small groups. I personally do not think it is an
acceptable way to run a country. Socialism and for that matter communism
are fine in small doses. Corporations are not really socialisms though.
They are a form of collective. Collectives or groups do take on
personalities. Groups are not individuals, but we as individuals can create
the corporation that can live beyond our lifetimes if that is what we
choose. I do not think we have some God given right to form corporations,
but I think it was brilliant people who came up with it and I am grateful
for the tool.
I have never myself created a corporation or even owned stock in one, but
here is irony for you... the very reason I would protect the rights of
corporations, the reason I would want to form one in the future is to
protect the rights you want to give to the government. If I create a work
or set of works that I deem important enough to save across generations I
would not want to entrust the purity of such works to any government. I
would want to charter a corporation that would protect the work from
unfavorable changes or uses, based on MY criteria, not the governments.
Over to you ...
Andy
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