From: Loic Dachary loic@gnu.org
Georg C. F. Greve writes:
What you can transfer are "exclusive exploitation rights," which economically behave like the anglo-american Copyright, but it does not contain the "personality rights" of the author.
That's what we call "droits moraux" (moral rights) in France. Maybe Till can tell us if these "personality rights" are common to all countries in Europe. Are there European countries that have no such concept ? It exists in Germany (my guess), in France and ... ?
It does exist in Germany and is called "Urheberrecht" commonly falsely translated into "Copyright" - I would rather use the term "Authorship rights".
Hello,
On Thu, 13 Jun 2002, Joerg Schilling kindly wrote:
From: Loic Dachary loic@gnu.org
Georg C. F. Greve writes:
What you can transfer are "exclusive exploitation rights," which economically behave like the anglo-american Copyright, but it does not contain the "personality rights" of the author.
That's what we call "droits moraux" (moral rights) in France. Maybe Till can tell us if these "personality rights" are common to all countries in Europe. Are there European countries that have no such concept ? It exists in Germany (my guess), in France and ... ?
This is indeed a very important distinction to which more attention should be paid in the political discussion. In fact, Copyright is the privilege of printing and distributing which was granted to publishers after the invention of the printing press. This is where Anglo-american Copyright Law is stuck until today: If a contract has no explicit description of what is transferred, the author sells all his rights on a work to the publisher (best example: Superman was sold for U$ 130, but US Courts seem to see that in a different light - after more than 50 years... http://www.fortress-of-solitude.net/copyright/comicon1.html )
In opposition to that, Author's rights give back the control to the Author, generally resolving possible conflicts in favor of the latter. (This is also why we need a different assignement in Europe than in the US.)
"Moral Rights" (Urheberpersoenlichkeitsrecht) exist in most EU countries (I don't know of any in which they wouldn't), albeit to a differnt extent. In France for example, they are much stronger, the droit d'retention (i.e. withdrawing a license under certain circumstances) is commonly accepted, whereas in Austria this right was granted only once in a high court decision - to the surprise of most scholars.
It does exist in Germany and is called "Urheberrecht" commonly falsely translated into "Copyright" - I would rather use the term "Authorship rights".
From my understanding, all progressive (so probably all continental european)
countries use a law definition derived from ideas of the french revolution while the UK is still using laws derived from the roman law.
Not exacly Roman Law, at least as far as Copy-/Author's Rights are concerned. If you're interested in the history of Author's Rights and their connection to things like DMCA/EUCD I might recommend a paper I presented recently at the International Conference on E-Business in Beijing. You can find it at http://www.sbg.ac.at/~jack/legal.htm (most recent version) or: http://www.ffs.or.at/artikel/
Georg Jakob jack@unix.sbg.ac.at wrote:
[...] This is where Anglo-american Copyright Law is stuck until today:
[...]
Slight side point, but is "Anglo-american" really the right description anyway? Ireland seems to have gone a similar path to DMCA and EUCD with this law: http://www.bailii.org/ie/legis/num_act/carra2000282/ which makes me think they're using a similar model.
Can anyone (maybe even Irish) tell us more about copyright in Ireland?
Other than that, I'm again saddened by attacks about legal and structural differences. It's just different. No-one should take the moral high ground and talk down to another country (eg "your law is *stuck* in the ancient past"), as I think all our systems are facing serious challenges and we must work together to overcome them. Nowhere is immune, as far as I can tell.
Joerg Schilling schilling@fokus.gmd.de schrieb/wrote:
From my understanding, all progressive (so probably all continental european) countries use a law definition derived from ideas of the french revolution while the UK is still using laws derived from the roman law.
While it is true that Continental authors' rights ared based on ideas from the French Revolution, UK laws have never been influenced much by Roman Law. On the contrary, the UK legal system is based on the Common Law, which is completly different from the Continental-European Civil Law systems (or ius civile), which were derieved from the Roman Law.
The Anglo-American copyright system stems from censorship laws; you had to get a licence from the monarch to publish books. This license often granted exclusive rights to copy that particular book.
Claus