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World Copyright Treaty Coming soon

Posted by michael on from the one-world-government dept.

ebresie writes: "According to an article in Info World, the World Intellectual Property Organization indicates that the WIPO Copyright Treaty is scheduled to go into effect in March of 2002. The treaty "is designed to protect the rights of composers, artists, writers, and others whose work is distributed over the Internet or other digital media." It also makes reference of the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty which "specifically protects the digital-media rights of producers and performers of sound recordings"." This is not a "new" treaty; rather it's the old one, which says much the same thing as the DMCA and was used to justify the passage of the DMCA. Now the same provisions will be in effect across many countries.

6 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. GPL - for other works by eclectric · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Could the GPL be extended to, say, artistic works? That way an artist could simply copyright(copyleft) his or her works and therefore bypass these kinds of inane copyright laws. Granted, one could simply make their works public domain, but you still would need some public protections. (Like, you might want to make your stuff freely available, but you don't want others taking credit for it. Or, you just might not want anyone else to make money off of it either.)

    Any thoughts?

    1. Re:GPL - for other works by lynx_user_abroad · · Score: 3, Interesting
      ...one could simply make their works public domain...


      No, you can't! That's one of the most non-intuitive parts of the DMCA which many peope don't get.


      If you create a work (you are the copyright owner) and release it CSS encrypted on a DVD, you lose a portion of your copyright-granted control over that work. Specifically, you can no longer just turn it loose to the public domain because anyone who would want to view, or copy, or derive from your work must buy a CSS license, and must agree to the terms
      of that license. And you (as the copyright owner) have no control over what that license allows the purchaser to do.
      The CSS license currently says (and the Law backs them up) that you can't make a copy of the work, even if you have otherwise been granted the right to do so by the copyright owner.


      So who cares? It's not like a lot of people are creating a lot of copyrighted works in an encrypted format that you have to have a license to decrypt, right?


      Think again. How much of your copyrighted material exists in a proprietary file format for which you must purchase a license to decode it?


      Got any Word documents? or PowerPoint charts? or FrameMaker documents?


      If the courts rule that a proprietary file format "effectively controls access to" the copyrighted material contained within, then programs like Star Office will be as illegal to make or posess as DeCSS is today.

      --

      The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.

  2. Maybe the reds... by Tebriel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Maybe China will, for once, actually help stem the tide, since they have such lax laws. Now that they're a member of the WTO, maybe they can actually make a moderating stand against this, or something.

    --
    The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
  3. This might be good. by booch · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If the wording in the treaty truly says "composers, artists, writers" that's actually a good thing. That would give the actual artists more power over the companies that "own" the rights to their works.

    --
    Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
  4. "Compilations" by Dr.Dubious+DDQ · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Compilations of data or other material, in any form, which by reason of the selection or arrangement of their contents constitute intellectual creations, are protected as such.

    I THINK what they mean here is that if, for example, you publish a book containing 10 public-domain short-stories or articles, that if someone else comes along and publishes a book with the same 10 public-domain works, that it would be a violation of your copyright to the particular collection you've put together, though the reprinting of none of the individual original public-domain works violates any copyright law...

    I think.

    --
    Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
  5. Re:I fail to see... by ChaosDiscordSimple · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I fail to see how this is a problem (and I'm not trying to troll). If someone is capable of claiming "rights" on some physical artifact that they created then why shouldn't someone be able to claim rights on some non-physical artifact that they created as well? For example, the farmer creates carrots, let's say, and has certain rights over the carrots (they belong to him, etc.) and expects to be compensated for expending the effort necessary to create the carrots.

    The farmer's rights to his carrots don't derive from the effort in creating them. His rights derive from the fact that if I take his carrots, he will no longer have carrots. If I copy a jazz CD, the original artist still has his original recording.

    I believe copyright is a good idea and does effectively encourage creative efforts. But it's important to understand that copyright has nothing to do with physical property. They're different sets of rules and should be treated as such.