Posted on 10/30/2010 4:05:00 AM PDT by GonzoII
While authors have the right to be recognised and rewarded for their work, the purpose of intellectual property protection is the "promotion of literary, scientific or artistic production and ... inventive activity for the sake of the common good", Vatican officials said.
A delegation of the Holy See told a gathering of the World Intellectual Property Organisation that Pope Benedict is troubled by the "excessive zeal" with which rich countries have been protecting their intellectual property rights, especially when it comes to health care in developing countries, reports the ZeroPaid website.
"On the part of rich countries there is excessive zeal for protecting knowledge through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property, especially in the field of health care," Pope Benedict says in an Encyclical Letter quoted by the delegation at the 48th World Intellectual Property Organization General Assembly last month.
The report said copyright holdings have become the bedrock of profits for an array of business interests, multinational corporations like those in the movie and music industry in particular and there has been an increasing push to protect them at all costs, even to the detriment of society and culture.
"The raison d'être of the protection system of intellectual property is the promotion of literary, scientific or artistic production and, generally, of inventive activity for the sake of the 'common good,' said the delegation.
"Thus protection officially attests the right of the author or inventor to recognition of the ownership of his work and to a degree of economic reward. At the same time it serves the cultural and material progress of society as a whole."
FULL STORY
Vatican Criticizes Rich Countries' "Excessive Zeal" for Copyright Enforcement (ZeroPaid.com)
PHOTO CREDIT
Richest corporation in the world, by far.
His Holiness should continue to act and speak where he has expertise and authority; economics and commerce are not such disciplines.
Strongly disagree. Just as a house and land that my great grandfather bought can be passed through the generations to me and my children, if my great grandparent wrote a book that legacy should be passed on to future generations in perpetuity.
Agree with you. An artist creates art for art’s sake, not for the common good -whatever that is.
Thank you for appreciating that even cartoon characters don’t fall out of the sky. Creation can take years of work and struggle.
A house and land are "real goods". "Intellectual property" is not. And NO ONE is entitled to an eternal government monopoly, which is what this is all about. The Constitution and writings of the Founding Fathers are quite clear on the difference, and why a TEMPORARY monopoly, enforced by government, is useful to society. Take your argument up with them.
Copyright abuse ping
But the public might not get to view them if they get in private hands.
Thank you. I get fed up sometimes with the philistinism of some FRers. As a writer and artist married to a musician/composer it frustrating to see how little some people understand what goes into this type of work. It can take five years to write a novel. It costs thousands of dollars to make a quality recording. Artists often go through decades of grinding poverty in order to finish a work. They should be able to pass the fruits of this labor onto their descendents.
Well I do pay for electricity and film and a computer etc.
So yes, I do think that Shakespeare’s heirs (if there were any) should still be getting royalties every time his plays are used.
The concept of authors’ and composers’ copyrights was not a well understood idea at that time. And even a century later the great American composer and lyricist Stephen Foster died penniless because of not being able to collect royalties on his sheet music sales.
It is a form of philistinism to place a permanent value on a building.and deny that same value to a book or composition.
The important words are "limited time" and "exclusive Right." Copyright is a temporary monopoly privilege. All our growth depends on shared knowledge. It requires that we be able to mine a common resource without fear of punishment or need for permission.
This Right is the only one actually mentioned in the Constitution. Unfortunately, it has been undermined and negated by the USSC and Congress by allowing the illegal and unconstitutional Opinion that was never adjudicated or determined from the actual trial.
The Founders and Writers of our Constitution were well aware of the close entanglements of the British Military and Corporations (East India Company), where they would both invoke the privileges of the other to effect the taxing policies demanded by the Crown. Corporations (and all other governmentally created entities) are assigned limited Privileges and Powers that can be changed at will; by force if necessary by the government, and by bribery and corruption by corporations.
By allowing this to stand, our FedGov has allowed Corporations to usurp the copyright and patent laws to their own ends, when in fact they have no real right to hold those copyrights or patents - they are individual rights that belong to an individual, not an unaccountable group of privilege.
This article is about what someone said about what someone said about what the Pope supposedly said.
Frankly, I’d like to see the original quote, in context.
The Founding Fathers set copyright terms at 14 years, renewable for another 14 years.
That should be sufficient.
And the Holy Father seems here to actually be talking about patents. I don’t have a strong view on patents, as I think they’re still limited to 17 years. Although, I oppose software patents, as they are like patenting math, and are often granted for vague and obvious things.
Yup. “For the sake of the common good” is a phrase that should always raise a red flag. It’s disappointing, but not surprising, to hear it from the Vatican.
More about "the common good." Ownership trumped by "the common good." Not good.
The fact that Foster handled his IP and finances badly is not my (or governments) problem. Some folks still do that today, when patents and copyright are "well understood" (but, given the discussion here, that seems not to be the case).
"It is a form of philistinism to place a permanent value on a building.and deny that same value to a book or composition."
LOL. You have a VERY active imagination. There is no such thing as a "permanent value" for a building. See today's real estate prices as to why. There is no monopoly on real estate, which is what you are proposing. After copyright expires, nobody is stopping the author from continuing to sell his book/article/song/play.....it just means that he is not the ONLY person who can legally do so.
Which, BTW, was why the monopoly was instituted in the first place....because for literally millenia, technological advances have been discovered and then lost because the inventors kept the processes secret to avoid competition or theft of their ideas, and failing to transmit the information to successors before they died. The deal was that the government would grant a TEMPORARY monopoly on right to sell in exchange for completely revealing the idea so protected.
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