[Foundation-l] Re-licensing

[George Herbert]

On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 8:22 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>wrote:

> > I'm sorry, Thomas, but until people learn to use jurisprudential
> > concepts such as "moral rights" properly, I have a moral obligation to
> > point out where they are used mistakenly.  This is not a question of
> > "the world outside the legal profession" (and, indeed, if you were a
> > member of the legal profession -- or a philosopher -- you wouldn't
> > make the mistake of supposing this).  Philosophy of law is accessible
> > to people who aren't lawyers -- even you. But it's clear that the word
> > "moral rights" is being thrown around here by people who are only
> > casually familiar with the concept. When you have actually given some
> > study to jurisprudential philosophers (see, e.g., H.L.A. Hart and Lon
> > Fuller) and can offer some more sophisticated philosophical analysis
> > than you offer here, I will be able to take your pronunciamentos more
> > seriously.
>
> Where do you think laws come from? Do you think they appear from
> nowhere? They are created by politicians (and sometimes judges) based
> on moral values. Those moral values imply certain moral rights whether
> they are written down in statute (or case law) or not.
>

Used relative to copyright law, the term unambiguously means what Mike is
saying, the rights that Europe (and others) have assigned to actual authors
distinct from copyright owners etc.

The specific term as used in copyright law (as Mike says, a "term of the
art" in that field) has no legal utility in the United States, as those
rights in question are not acknowledged by US copyright law or precedent.

This is a discussion about copyright law and licenses under / related to it,
is it not?  And not philosophy writ large?


There was a slight danger in the Foundation chosing to hire Mike as counsel,
that he has a long-established tendency to poke fun at people ( cf. Godwin's
Law, and more long painful Usenet discussions from 20 plus years ago than I
care to remember at the moment...).  This is going over rather badly with
some people's sense of moral indignation over licensing and copyright
issues.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com