[Patents] Outreach Volunteers Needed - Content Control is a Dead End

[Bernard Lang <Bernard.Lang@inria.fr> (Bernard Lang)]

This cause is very similar to, though in some ways worse, that the
problem of software patenting.
  Both relate in pretty much similar ways to the United States
Constitution Section 8, Clause8 "To promote Progress of Science and
useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors
the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries",
which constrains IP by public usefulness,

  and both induce restrictions on free speech guaranteed by the first
amendment

  Two questions :

  - none of these constitutional rules apply outside the USA.  So how
can non-american help ?
    I am aware that given the political clout of the USA, solving the
problem in the USA would help everywhere; indeed it is to a large
extent being imposed by the lobbying of US companies.

  - several organizations are already fighting DMCA (and, maybe to a
lesser extent, software patents) in the USA on that basis.  What is
your relation to them ?


Good luck

Bernard



On Wed, Aug 29, 2001 at 02:16:25AM -0400, Seth Johnson wrote:
> 
> I'm sending this because I am looking for concerned individuals who
> understand the importance of the following cause:
> 
> 
> Content control is a dead end.
> 
> The legal tradition in copyright has always drawn a distinction between
> facts and ideas on one hand, which nobody can own; and expression on the
> other hand, which is what has been allowed to be copyrighted.  The thing
> is, data elements are facts, whether they are part of an expressive work
> or not.  Free speech, the use of information and the very purpose of
> copyright are being revised by publishers and other "content"
> stakeholders by means of "content" control measures, such as the
> American Digital Millennium Copyright Anticircumvention Act, and the
> provisions of the international TRIPS treaty.
> 
> Currently, a Russian citizen, Dmitry Sklyarov, is being prosecuted for
> felony charges under the DMCA, for work he did in developing software
> that decrypts the Adobe e-Book.
> 
> The Copyright Clause in the US Constitution is geared toward allowing
> Congress to grant artificial monopolies ("exclusive Right" for "limited
> Times" to "Writings and Discoveries") in order to "promote the Progress
> of Science and useful Arts."  It does not grant copyright as a natural
> right, and it does not provide for the superseding of free speech by
> this power of Congress.
> 
> Do you agree that content control must not be allowed to enable
> copyright to supersede our free speech right to process and distribute
> information?
> 
> We need outreach volunteers and coordinators who wish to help get the
> word out about what is going on, and to build the constituency of those
> who are affected by these developments.
> 
> If you agree that content control must not be allowed to enable
> copyright to supersede free speech rights, then please contact me, or
> subscribe to the C-FIT Content Control Outreach discussion list by
> sending an email saying "subscribe C-FIT_Release_Community" to
> ListServ@realmeasures.dyndns.org.
> 
> Seth Johnson
> seth.johnson@RealMeasures.dyndns.org
> 
> Information Producers Initiative Basic Position Statement:
> http://realmeasures.dyndns.org/C-FIT/Theory1.htm
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Patents maillist  -  Patents@liberte.aful.org
> http://liberte.aful.org/mailman/listinfo/patents

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