On 2/8/07, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
IANAL, but I'm not sure this can be applied to
works of art, photographs
and all the non-text things we're talking about. Last months SIAE
(Italian Society of Authors and Publishers) enforced copyright on an
amateurial art website which was showing contemporary paintings. The
website was describing and commenting these works, so the use of the
pictures was "to illustrate what it was talking about". Still, this is
copyright infringement under the Italian Law. Instructional purposes
means that a teacher can distribute N copies of a copyrighted media to
his/her students, but if you print a book well you have to pay the
copyright owner his/her fair royalty.
My understanding from talking to someone I know who is a professor at
a university is Italy (i.e. not a legal authority), is that the
Italian law takes a much more aggressive stance on the commercial
impact of a work than does the law other places. I don't believe
that the foundation policy should be to conform to the most
restrictive laws in the world, ... we should still be able to discuss
democracy even if the Chinese government forbids such discussion.
Rather, we should adopt rules reflecting a common subset.
Winks and nods seem to work well in Chinese copyright. The new
unhackable MS operating system was immediately available as quickly as
it came out in the US. Some countries enforce copyrights by
occasionally seizing a big stack of pirated CDs and running them over
with a bulldozer in front of the cameras. :-)
Ec