Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: Re: Life, Liberty & Copyright
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Tue, 06 Oct 1998 19:06:40 -0400
Date: Tue, 06 Oct 1998 10:56:13 -0500 To: farber () cis upenn edu From: "David W. Maher" <dwmaher () ibm net> Subject: Re: IP: Life, Liberty & Copyright Dave: I can never resist the challenge to get into a good copyright brawl: The US Constitution (Art.1,Sec.8,Cl.8) says: The Congress shall have power...To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to AUTHORS and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. (EMPHASIS ADDED) Further, our Congress, in its wisdom, added Sec 106A to the copyright statute in 1990: "Rights of certain authors to attribution and integrity" It is certainly true that our Constitution picks up the English tradition of copyright (which started out as a government license to publish), but the First Amendment was intended to protect freedom of expression. There is a strong tradition in American copyright law that copyright vests in an employer for hire, whether the employer is a natural person - the usual case in the 18th Cent. - or a corporation. The Sec.106A "moral rights" or "droit d'auteur" concept finally made it into our statute in 1990 as a recognition that it was needed to balance the ownership rights of employers. The concept had, however, been recognized by US case law in a few instances even before 1990. I am not convinced that the American Revolution needs completing, at least in the copyright area. David Maher At 04:38 AM 10/6/98 -0400, you wrote:
From: "Harry Hillman Chartrand" <h-chartrand () home com> Subject: Life, Liberty & Copyright First, I wish to commend Atlantic Monthly for this outstanding series. The main article by Charles C. Mann: "Who Will Own Your Next GoodIdea?" <http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98sep/copy.htm> and the clashingviewpoints of the Roundtable participants does much to illuminate the dark recesses of a critically important issue for the future of our 'post-modern society'.
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