[Foundation-l] promotion of free licenses

[Lars Aronsson]

David Monniaux 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, [...]
> 
> 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.
> [...]
> An important point is that for the last 150 years, French 
> copyright law has been (at least in theory, practice is 
> different, see below) centered around the idea of an *author* 
> making a *work of the mind* which is his *property*. The author 
> then authorizes *each use* of the work.

There are many kinds of authors.  In Sweden, each kind of authors 
(novelist, poets, composers, schoolbook writers, ...) has a 
separate organization, and none can speak for authors/creators of 
all kinds.  And then many people occasionally write without being 
part of any organization.  Letters to the editor are published 
without any remuneration.  Is that different in France?

If a (freelance) contributor of articles for an encyclopedia would 
not sell "full rights" for unbounded duration, the encyclopedia 
publisher would be in an absurd situation.  In most cases -- 
correct me if I'm wrong -- the following editions of the same 
encyclopedia will reuse and modify the text without asking new 
permission from the old author.  So is there any organization 
where French contributors to traditional encyclopedias (typically 
university professors) discuss the terms and conditions under 
which they license their articles to the publisher?

> Another important issue is that this whole debate is not
> France-centered. "Copyright" as practiced in the US is largely an
> American conception

Even though this argument is often heard, the same kinds of works 
(novels, songs, newspapers, encyclopedias) exist in all countries, 
always written by people and published by publishers.  So the 
situation doesn't seem to be very different in reality.  It seems 
that Creative Commons has been fully adopted to the French legal 
framework, http://creativecommons.org/worldwide/fr/


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se