World Copyright Treaty Coming soon 202
ebresie writes: "According to an article in Info World,
the World Intellectual Property Organization indicates that the WIPO Copyright Treaty is scheduled to go into effect in March of 2002. The treaty "is designed to protect the rights of composers, artists, writers, and others whose work is distributed over the Internet or other digital media." It also makes reference of the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty which "specifically protects the digital-media rights of producers and performers of sound recordings"." This is not a "new" treaty; rather it's the old one, which says much the same thing as the DMCA and was used to justify the passage of the DMCA. Now the same provisions will be in effect across many countries.
GPL - for other works (Score:4, Interesting)
Any thoughts?
Maybe the reds... (Score:3, Interesting)
Copyrights are good (Score:1, Interesting)
Some people will say that's good because 90% is pop culture and not real art. But companies that deal in intellectual property employ tens of thousands of people and create a huge amount of wealth. If there wasn't any IP protection then thousands of jobs would be lost. The idea of a starving artist or musician who creates for the love of art or music is a lie. Everyone dreams of being famous and profiting from their works.
It seems the only people who advocate getting rid of intellectual property protections are those who have never created anything and only want to use someone else's work for their own profit. Intellectual property protections are actually good because they force people to create something better than what exists today. Patents are a perfect example. There are thousands of companies researching new technology to create products that are better and cheaper than what we have today. Without patent protection we would have to rely on the government and universities for research. And since they aren't for profit we would only get things some geek thought up in a lab and would probably have no practical use in the real world.
I fail to see... (Score:2, Interesting)
For example, the farmer creates carrots, let's say, and has certain rights over the carrots (they belong to him, etc.) and expects to be compensated for expending the effort necessary to create the carrots. Similarly, a musician creates jazz, let's say, and has certain rights over that jazz (it belongs to him/her, etc.) and expects to be able to be compensated for expending the effort necessary to create that jazz.
Where's the difference here? The only difference I see is that carrots have a physical manifestation which limits their ability to be easily duplicated and dispersed among a large audience. Music on the other hand, especially in our digital world, can be easily duplicated. The fact that music can be duplicated doesn't mean that the creator should give up his rights to it. If that is the case then what is the problem in passing a law which protects the creator's rights?
This might be good. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:GPL - for other works (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Who Are These Guys? (Score:2, Interesting)
Very good question. However, I think you're rather unlikely to get a good answer. For instance, you could ask the same of the WTO. No one knows. No one's telling. Members are "appointed" through some transnational process, but that process is non-public and appears to differ from member state to member state.
This was actually part of the impetus for the (in)faimous Seattle WTO protests. I remember a couple of my west-coast dwelling friend's professors encouraging everyone to go (i.e. no bad marks for missing class) to promote openness and accountability in government.
The WTO and WIPO are (very influiential) non-governmental organizations. That's the problem at the moment: they're really accountable to no one other then their fat-cat corporate sponsors.
Of course, maybe you like corporate sponsors and think that sort of thing is how the world aughtta work. Hey, takes all kinds.
"Compilations" (Score:3, Interesting)
I THINK what they mean here is that if, for example, you publish a book containing 10 public-domain short-stories or articles, that if someone else comes along and publishes a book with the same 10 public-domain works, that it would be a violation of your copyright to the particular collection you've put together, though the reprinting of none of the individual original public-domain works violates any copyright law...
I think.
Re:GPL - for other works (Score:3, Interesting)
No, you can't! That's one of the most non-intuitive parts of the DMCA which many peope don't get.
If you create a work (you are the copyright owner) and release it CSS encrypted on a DVD, you lose a portion of your copyright-granted control over that work. Specifically, you can no longer just turn it loose to the public domain because anyone who would want to view, or copy, or derive from your work must buy a CSS license, and must agree to the terms
of that license. And you (as the copyright owner) have no control over what that license allows the purchaser to do.
The CSS license currently says (and the Law backs them up) that you can't make a copy of the work, even if you have otherwise been granted the right to do so by the copyright owner.
So who cares? It's not like a lot of people are creating a lot of copyrighted works in an encrypted format that you have to have a license to decrypt, right?
Think again. How much of your copyrighted material exists in a proprietary file format for which you must purchase a license to decode it?
Got any Word documents? or PowerPoint charts? or FrameMaker documents?
If the courts rule that a proprietary file format "effectively controls access to" the copyrighted material contained within, then programs like Star Office will be as illegal to make or posess as DeCSS is today.
CWPL - idea draft (Score:2, Interesting)
1.Require representation of the document (even modifications) to clearly indicate the original author.
2. Ban anyone from making money off CWPL'd works, without the author's permission. (I don't know how I feel about this. On one hand, this is needed because without it, publishers could just pick books off the net, legally publish them and not have to pay the author. On the other, it doesn't jibe with the GPL)
3. Require that any subsequent or derivitive use also be automatically under the CWPL. (This also doesn't go with the GPL, and I'm not even user if this is a good idea.)
What makes this different from public domain? Well, I still have a legal right to keep my name on things. Also, nobody else can make money on my book by splashing on a new cover. (think about L. Frank Baum and how publishers have raked in the cash without forking a single cent over to his family).
The CWPL could even have a stipulation that derivite works are exempt from the CWPL after the author's death (automatically) or at a specific date that the author specifies. This would leave the opening to make original works under any copy protection scheme we wanted, but only after the author has specified. Still, it would remain illegal for others to make money off the original work, and would require that any copy of the work carry the original author's name.
I'm trying to think of applications and cases where this would be useful and necessary.
Re:I fail to see... (Score:3, Interesting)
I fail to see how this is a problem (and I'm not trying to troll). If someone is capable of claiming "rights" on some physical artifact that they created then why shouldn't someone be able to claim rights on some non-physical artifact that they created as well? For example, the farmer creates carrots, let's say, and has certain rights over the carrots (they belong to him, etc.) and expects to be compensated for expending the effort necessary to create the carrots.
The farmer's rights to his carrots don't derive from the effort in creating them. His rights derive from the fact that if I take his carrots, he will no longer have carrots. If I copy a jazz CD, the original artist still has his original recording.
I believe copyright is a good idea and does effectively encourage creative efforts. But it's important to understand that copyright has nothing to do with physical property. They're different sets of rules and should be treated as such.
I don't know. (Score:2, Interesting)
I seem to find myself wishing that I could select which portion of these laws and treaties that apply to me and ignore the rest.
I doubt I am the only one that feels this way. I was angry at the RIAA and others that shut down the Napster that I knew and loved, but I was probably more angry at the people caught with millions of copies of my company's software.
So in reality, I don't know what to think about this. I see a need to protect what people create, but I also see how this is taken way too far. Unfortunately, I have little hope that reason and sanity will come from an international group of politicians.
Re:What utter nonsense (Score:2, Interesting)
You realize I wasn't saying the organization itself or our nations involvement in it was a secret. I was making the point that how someone becomes representative to this organization is not public information. Nor are its proceedings, which are all held behind closed doors.
And I really hate to hoist your by your own petard, but, it seems that some people withing the USTR agree [ustr.gov] [ustr.gov]. I might also point out that this information came to light after December 3rd 1999, which is a nice concidence, don'tcha think?
You know what else is a corporate conspiracy? The CIA!
Not quite. The director of the CIA is a presidentially appointed position that undergoes a similar ratification process as cabenet appointments and abassadors. The CIA director is in theory ultimitely responsible for all actions of the CIA.
It fascinates me that any anti-corporate, anti-government, anti-consumption post I make is almost always taken to be a conspiracy. I don't think theres anything of the sort going on, unless you'd call a country club a conspiracy. It's just business as usual on the global scale.
Re:GPL - for other works (Score:2, Interesting)
But think about CSS...
People who study cryptography think of CSS as little more than an obsfucated proprietary storage format. Once you know how to interpret the bits, it's simply a matter of running the file through an interpreter (DeCSS).
Now think about Word documents.
When you first create (...fix in a tangible form...) an original work in Word, it's stored in a proprietary file format. Like CSS the
There are many benefits for a company to do this. How's this for a neat marketing run-in:
"Protect your saved files, even if your laptop is stolen or your server rooted..."
But there's an even better reason....
When you create, for example, a Word document, the original (not a derivative) is stored in the saved file. If that saved file format is already considered (under law) to be an "access control mechanism", then you don't have the option (as you would with a CSS DVD) to just abandon the derivative and release the original to the public domain.
Remember, there a significant amount of intellectual property present in the original file which isn't present in a derivative, for example style sheets and tags. If you're looking to publish (or release to the public domain) these parts of your work, you'll have to release it in Word format (meaning anyone who wants to use it needs to buy a Word license) or abandon your intellectual property but for the parts Word allows you to export. (And Microsoft has no incentive to make it easy for their current customers to switch over to a competitor's product.)
This is the best reason of all: complete vendor lock in.
Using DVD's as an example, it's easy to see how a Microsoft could argue that products like K-Office or StarOffice are analgous to DeCSS -- they allow someone who doesn't have a license to bypass the author's access control mechanism and make illegal use of copyrighted works -- and therefore should be declared illegal, and employees of companies (or SourceForge project members) should be jailed (aka Dimitri) for their actions.
How many individuals and companies which currently have documents stored in proprietary file formats would be able to just write-off these assets? Not many, I'd guess.
So, I reckon there's just one court case (or M$ marketing statement) standing between where we are now and "all your works are belong to us".
Now do you remember why you started using Open Source?