[A2k] Users' rights

[Claude Almansi]

Ditto in Switzerland, to some extent: when the Loi sur le Droit
d'Auteur was revised a couple of years ago, we did get some
harrowingly complex phrases like "restrictions of copyright" and
"limitations of restrictions of copyright" which make it rather
difficult for the directly concerned people to understand what's what.
But in the official texts about the revision, the phrase "balance
between authors' and users' rights" was often used.

Re a possible negative connotation of "user": I have done  books and
other texts, and in that context, "user" reminds me of the idiom "just
[or:"not even"] fit to be used as toilet paper"; so I prefer to think
of people who read books/texts as readers - in everyday life.

But I have no objection to "user" in legal texts: why not, if
sculptors and compositors are "authors" in laws about authors' rights?

Best

Claude

On Sat, Jun 27, 2009 at 9:08 PM, Michael Geist <mgeist@pobox.com> wrote:
>
> One advantage of using the term "users' rights" is that it has been
> legally recognized. =C2=A0The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that
> exceptions and limitations in copyright should be viewed as users'
> rights that must be balanced against creators' rights. =C2=A0That same
> language was picked up by the Copyright Board of Canada yesterday in
> the decision that Manon distributed.
>
> MG