[Foundation-l] promotion of free licenses

[geni]

On 11/22/06, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
> As a member of the board of Wikimedia France, I had a meeting with the
> head and the legal counsel of some society of authors, whose name I
> shall leave unstated (the problems are not specific to them).
>
> Their legal counsel told me that their stance is that all legal
> conditions stating that the author cedes all rights for an unbounded
> duration are abusive and that they were ready to fight that in court if
> necessary.
>

Of course. Free content is however you look at it a threat to at least
some of their members. If they can find a way to mess it up then they
have a duty to their memebers to use it.


>For almost everybody on this list (I'm leaving out Brad and Danny, sorry
>folks), Wikipedia is a hobby project that we contribute to in our free
>time. This is not the case of these people. Their works are their
>livelihood. They're in a bad position, they feel shafted by the economic
>powers, so they naturally have a tendency to be wary of evolutions that
>may make their situation worse. That's human. When I discussed "free of
>rights" stuff with them, I felt like somebody trying to promote Sauron
>of Mordor to hobbits. Not a comfortable position, believe me.

Then perhaps you are talking to the wrong people. Existing content
creators are amoung the group least likely to want to work with us.
Fortunetly for the most part there are other groups we can work with.

> Another important issue is that this whole debate is not
> France-centered. "Copyright" as practiced in the US is largely an
> American conception (though British law may be somewhat similar to some
> extent,)

Other than where required through the Berne Convention not so much

>even though apparently the British recognize scanning images as
>creating rights?

There has not been a relivant case in over a century so it is a bit of
a grey area but one I tend to feel best kept away from.

> The Berne convention, which many countries
> (including, somewhat recently, the US) have signed is based on 19th
> century French ideas of the rights of authors (I reckon Victor Hugo
> pushed for it. Yes, the guy who originally wrote the Hunchback of
> Notre-Dame. :-) )
>

Quite a number of major european writers pushed for it.
 --
geni