On Thu, Feb 19, 2004 at 06:02:09PM +0000, Gareth Owen wrote:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski taw@users.sf.net writes:
They have pretty decent pipes and they don't care much about foreign copyrights.
Taiwan is a signatory to the Copyright Treaty. What you suggest is illegal.
Ouch, it seems they were forced to change the law to get into WTO.
Pre-WTO situation:
http://www.wangandwang.com/cr-info.htm In Taiwan, ownership of the copyright to a work is granted to Taiwan nationals upon completion of the work. By virtue of the 1946 Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation Treaty between the R.O.C. and the U.S., the works of U.S. nationals are also granted copyright upon completion. Other foreigners must register their copyrights with the Copyright Committee of the Ministry of the Interior ("MOI") in order to receive protection. In order to qualify for copyright registration, the foreign copyright owners must meet one of the following requirements: * Their works must have been first published in Taiwan prior to its publication in other countries. * They must be a national of a state which, in accordance with the state's treaties, laws, regulations, or customs, grants works created by Taiwan nationals equivalent rights to those if its own nationals. (According to the MOI, the countries currently meeting this requirement are Spain, Britain, and the U.S.)
How about that ?
Well, accepting your completely inaccurate premise for a moment...
You're offering me all the knowledge of the world, freely and legally available to everyone with internet access, modulo their own countries censorship laws (and capabilities)?
I would consider that an insanely great idea. Really, completely, astoundingly insanely great.
Now, suppose there was a place facts could not be copyrighted, (but expressions of fact could) but where photographs of factual events could not be copyrighted, or could be freely used in reportage.
We'd be able to create a free encyclopedia into which all the knowledge of the world could be poured without any constraint, and illustrate historical events with photographs, where appropriate.
I would consider that an insanely great idea, too.
And to, a reasonable approximation, it exists. It's called the USA, with the "Fair Use" provision.
Now, why are you against that?
Plain wonderful, till you want to distribute it in Europe. Or sell it printed. Or use it commercially. Or when the owners of the copyrights decide your use isn't very fair. Or ...
Come on people, if you want non-free stuff, you have all the non-free websites and the P2P. They even have MS Windows sources there. Wikipedia won't lose much just because it'd have a couple fewer images, but the point of Wikipedia isn't to make it as good as possible, but to make it both good and free.