[Upd-discuss] Piracy and the Courts [2]

[Adam Moran]

I've been reluctant to post to Yahoo lists until I had gathered a
perspective on WIPO's "webcasters" treaty. The Union for the Public
Domain [1] have given this proposal quite a bit of thought recently, and
from this learned dialogue has sprung this end-point:

27/11/05 00:46 Jay Sulzberger wrote:

   The internal and external friction induced by such a treaty would end
   the present legal and customary system of free retransmission, whose
   practical realization is the Net itself ...

Why ?

27/11/05 00:46 Jay Sulzberger wrote:

   ... [ Because ] everybody who uses the Net, would be able to grab
   public domain work, and also copyrighted work, just because they have
   transmitted a copy of the work.

It's not so much the grabbing though, it's more the locking up:

27/11/05 00:46 Jay Sulzberger wrote:

   ... [ Below ] summarizes the central precedents and settled statute
   law that would be overthrown by the, extra-case-law and extra-statute,
   proposed Treaty on Webcasts ...

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[1] http://www.public-domain.org/