Dear Heather, Thanks for your interest.
If for my grand father Pierre Gilbert, he had passed away, he was for nod dead for more than 70 years. Hence, his works were not in the public domain and we had many discussions with the "ayant droits" (words you'll understand as French speaker) for me "right stealers", aka publishers in this case, that, even if they did some work, did a very little work in comparision to the author's work, and do claim that the "own" some rights. I had to convince my mother and her brothers and sisters of the value to open the works. Now, André Sterling and Philippe Roberts-Jones are old (91) but living people. The case is even more interesting. On their behalf, I contact the "other right owners" and claim that the author want to put their own works accessible to anyone. Why not the public domain ? Because this notion does not exist here. We do not have "copyright" but "droit d'auteur", which is different. Most of the time, it is considered "slightly different" but I view it (and I am not alone) as fundamentaly different from the "copyright". Here the author remains indefinitively the owner of the moral rights. He can perhaps sell the "patrimonial rights" (that allow to sell derivative from the works) but not the moral rights. Secondly, with the CC-By-SA I want the work to contribute to the virtuous circle that Wikipedia uses, based on the concept of copyleft that Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen have created. Averyone has the right to sell the works, to contribute to them, to make additions. But in turn everyone else ALSO have the rights to do the same with the extended works. No one can restrict the rights of anyone else to extend and resell the works. This is not true with the public domain. Some one can restrict the rights og the other to do what he received as right to do. I believe but I am ready to be contradicted, that CC-BY-SA does not put any restriction on further distribution (even as sold works) but on the contrary makes sure that no one is entitled to restrict any distribution rights. I do completely agree, as you state, that any knowledge, especially scholarly knowledge, and the works of the historians that my grand father, the aegyptologist Pierre Gilbert and the art historian Philippe Roberts-Jones are, as well as the engineer André Sterling, are scholarly works, but not only (there are novels, theater screenplays, poems and others) belong to the human culture. I do also agree that there may be circumstances where some works should not be usable without restriction because that may impede on someone (especially a living person) rights. But as you have said, the picture may well have been first inappropriately put in public spaces. About the consideration with finances, as clearly said by Peter Suber in his "Open Access" book, the academics, people whose work is to teach and transmit knowledge, at least them, do not write for a living. This may also be true for other people, like the journalists who are, I supposed often, paid once, to write their works) do NOT depend on their works primarily to make a living. This may well be a particularity of all those people producing knowledge (the academics), more than many other who are "creating new works" (that, often I see are not knowledge but more pleasure works that contribute to the culture) in the arts or humanities (I include novels, music, pictures, paintings and movie makers). I think it is a mistake to consider all these works (from the academics) and for the "creators" under the same laws. They are of completely different natures. And shoud probably be treated as such. But this opens discussions that we may contribute to but will go beyond the circle of this list. best regards, Dr Nicolas Pettiaux -- Nicolas Pettiaux, phd - [email protected] Open@work - Une Société libre utilise des outils libres _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
