[Upd-discuss] a longer term strategy for promoting thepublicdomain?

[David Basskin]

On 21-Aug-04, at 2:18 PM, Jay Sulzberger wrote:

>
>
> On Sat, 21 Aug 2004, David Basskin wrote:
>
>> "Our" goals? Sorry, I must have been out of the room when the 
>> Kool-Aid was being served.
>>
>> What a startling exercise in thought-policing your glossary is! 
>> Songwriters and music publishers who depend on copyright to protect 
>> their right to control the use of their works, and to be compensated 
>> for such use, would find your point of view absurd and offensive ... 
>> but at least we don't try to say that you shouldn't hold such 
>> thoughts.
>
> Of course, there is no general "right to control the use of their 
> works"
> granted to copyright holders.  Copyright is a system of government 
> created
> limited monopolies for special purposes.  Copyright does not grant the
> copyright holder legal power to dictate what private use I make of a 
> copy
> inside my house.

Yes, thanks to Part VIII of our Act, that's the case.

> Nor does copyright law stop me from reproducing and
> distributing a copyrighted work, if I must in order to speak freely and
> precisely of the work.
>

Nope. If you want to publish a book analyzing the music of, say, James 
Brown, and  you want to include copies of JB's songs, you can't do so 
without licenses from the music publishers and record labels involved. 
There's no general right, under Canadian copyright law, to exercise the 
right of reproduction in a copyright-protected work simply because you 
feel the need to make comment on it. The fair dealing exemption has 
never been held to extend to "reproduction and distribution of a 
copyrighted work" in its entirety.

> ad diction: Is it your position that, generally, we need not 
> distinguish
> copyrights from patents?  In careful discourse should we distinguish
> copyrights from patents?  Does the CMRRA distinguish between 
> copyrights and
> patents?
>
> oo--JS.
>

Uh, do you distinguish between your right hand and your left? Of course 
there's a distinction. I'm not aware of any effort ever having been 
undertaken to assert a patentable interest in a musical composition. 
Well, a successful effort, anyway. I have no way of knowing whether any 
attempt has ever been made in the past to patent a song, but I'm 
certainly not aware of one. Musical works are protected by copyrights, 
not patents. Why would we not observe such a distinction? Perhaps I'm 
missing your point.

David Basskin