[Upd-discuss] #2 Copyright Brief History

[Michael Hart]

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On Mon, 6 Sep 2004, François Briatte wrote:

>> If the car makers of 175 countries tried to so something like this,
>> they would be laughed out of town. . . .
>
> Global Business Dialogue on eCommerce ?

And it gets a lot of negative press, whereas copyright laws get none.


>>> -- in "WIPO, a success story", World Affairs, Fall  1997, vol. 160, #2, 
>>> pages 104-108
>> 
>> Hee hee!
>
> I knew that title would make you smile :)
> Obviously, a success for the WIPO staff.

Hardly an unbiased source of information. . . .


>>>> and that it is funded by a cartel of the
>>>> major members of the worldwide publishing industry. . yet it
>>>> hides itself under the flag of the United Nations
>>> 
>>> That's an overstatement. WIPO is an intergovernmental organization in 
>>> the first place. Blame the governments that listen to copyright 
>>> industries and then lobby at WIPO for protectionist digital agendas (US, 
>>> EU). WIPO mainly does what it is intended to do : although it has some 
>>> sort of autonomy, it is primarily a state-driven organization.
>> 
>> I must respectfully disagree:  this is, and always has been, business 
>> driven,
>> all the way back to the laws previous to The Statute Of Anne, which only 
>> make
>> The Statute Of Anne look decent by comparison to such awful rape and 
>> pillage
>> strategies that the laws of Queen Mary I were unenforceable as 
>> demonstration
>> in my previous message.
>
> Businesses do not enact legislation, governmental bodies do, that's what I 
> meant.

I don't think many of us are so naive as to believe that sort of thing,
nor for the judicial branch or the executive branches, but even more
obviously not true for legislative branches.

And much more so for copyright laws.

No one is even pretending that most copyright laws were written
by the publishers for the publishers, then lobbied into law.


>
>> I guess this depends on whose history you read. . .
>
> Shu Zhang wrote an outstandingly well documented Ph. D. on the WIPO to GATT 
> shift : « De l’OMPI au GATT », Litec, 1994 (French).

I'd LOVE to hear a few of your favorite quotations, if you would be so kind.


>>> Note : the UNESCO Universal Copyright Convention was elaborated to help 
>>> countries with little literary and artistic resources to enter the 
>>> internatl. IP system through a "lighter" protection regime (25 years or 
>>> 25 years post mortem auctoris). The UCC is subordinated to the Berne 
>>> Convention, however.
>> 
>> I have heard rumors about this, but not anything substantive, other than
>> a few "show" events. . .can you tell us where it actually provided 
>> countries with these 25 year or "life +25" copyrights?
>
> I think that's Article 4 of the UCC.

I'm talking "real world effect" here. . .not just on paper.

They take millions of books out of the public domain for millions
or billions of people, and put back hardly even a token amount.

!!!
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