Copyright

Kari Olavi Lepola klepola at cc.hut.fi
Tue Oct 17 15:57:13 CEST 2000


There has been so much talk about copyrightlaws etc and
now I think I have to tell my opinion.

Copyrightlaw will not become obsolete nor will it be removed.
Think how really basic thing it is that you have the right to
own your intellectual work. It is in some sort of relation even
with patents and such. Creating anything takes finacial investment,
even time you spend as a hobby can be considered worth something.
You absolytely must be able to protect your property and get the
money yourself from your work. I wouldn't work and then let somebody 
else take all the money away from me, 
even if they didn't keep any of the money themselves. It would
still be away from me and my dinner table. (I don't mean charity and
voluntary work and such. I mean working professionally)
So if intellectual work isn't protected people will stop doing it. 

Companies (even big ones) must be treated equally to humans.
If I work and create as an individual human beeing, everybody probably
say that I have right to "fruits of my work", then if I start a small
oneman company and do the same work and then the company grows to three,
ten, hundred, thousand workers company, when would my right to my property
end? If I buy shares of huge company I own a part of all it's property,
when would it seize to be my property and become general property?

Somebody gave the idea that Disney shouldn't have MORAL right to
its stories, because they dont' print them in the US or pay
artists only once etc. What has that to do with this? Would
there be different rights according to how nice and good you were and
how many people liked you or not? Law in the end really isn't about
moral it is about facts, why? Because there is no king Solomon,
you cannot draw lines based on character and feelings. You have to
stick to the book and treat everybody the same, even if it in
some conditions seems wrong, because in the other way the ground
in a real swamp and you will sink into it really, really fast.

About the possibility to legislate and enforce laws over the Internet.
Yes, at the moment you can use servers in other countries and work
around laws that way. But I do believe that things like copyright
and such will be legislated at least between western countries, when
the need to do so really arrises. And all the "other" countries will
probably be inclined to join these sort of agreements, baucause it
will probably be in their interest to do so. It's nice be close friends
with other countries and to do serious business with them, it is
at least more profitable. And the really wague third world contries?
If they don't allow their own people to get everywhere to the net,
why would they risk westeners to get into their contry to freely
post all sorts of stuff there? And even still we do live in our
own countries. Maybe they make it illegal for citizens to brake the
law in their own country by doing it from abroad. For example
I would live in US and send something to France to be posted back
to the US. 

And even now (at least between most contries) copyright law works. 
So for example Disney could probably sue somebody in Brazil.
They just have to start the court process there. And moving the pages to
another country wouldn't help because the question would be of a copyright
violation already done in Brazil. Most countries do already have
copyright laws that are similar. And once you have copyright somewhere
then you have it in the other countries with the laws also.

Then the amount thing. You can't catch all if there is enought people
to catch? Well it is basically right, but what if I catch say ten
and sue them with as much as I can and make sure that there is enough
publicity. The others might become woried that I might do the same to some
of them also. How is it, do they feel lucky? They might consider stopping
what ever they are doing that is illegal.

About public domain. When Bram Stoker wrote his story, he used the old
stories, and legend and the idea of vampires, He didn't create vampires,
he didnt' even create Dracula, but used the story of Vlad Tepes (I'm
not sure how is should be spelled) the monarc who actually lived. But
still he had/(has) the right to his text, the words in the order which
he used them, but not rights to  vampires. Like the story of Pocahontas,
Disney made a film about that. They have rights to that film, so that
nobody can make a copy of it and show it for money for other people.
But anyboydy can make their own film about Pocahontas and Disney can't
say anything about that. That's the point, the idea is public domain,
but not the work itself. I wouldn't call using the public domain
plundering, but using something which is copyrighted by somebody else
(like a character etc) is. 

Information revolution is indeed coming, and things like buying a story
directly from it's creator is a good thing. But there we aren't braking
copyright law, we are just doing normal business.
And if Don Rosa or any other artist sell his stories to Disney and
get paid once for all rights the matter is between them and nobody else.
Hopefully he gets the amount he thinks the story is worth, considering
that he sell all rights, also the right to print it as many times and
in as many contries as Disney likes. After that it's legally Disneys
property and I think that their rights should be honoured. 
We should remember that copyright isn't just about ducks, and comics
and this one company, it's a lot bigger issue.

Anyway I think that that is defenedly enough rambling from me :)

Kari.Lepola at hut.fi






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