Im America, the "codification" of which Stevan speaks must
not be called a property right. It is an artificial
monopoly that may be granted (or for that matter, denied) by
Congress within very important parameters. The
"giveaway/nongiveaway" distinction serves a political
purpose, while it must be stressed that in the area of
copyright, it fails to emphasize that we are speaking of an
artificial grant of exclusive rights to "expression" per se,
as opposed to any creation of a "property" right to
information.
Seth Johnson
Stevan Harnad wrote:
>
> theft of text
>
> owning [. . .] one's "text's authorship" rather than
> one's "intellectual property" or one's "moral rights"
> -- for the give-away texts (mainly research reports,
> before and after peer review) with which this Forum
> is concerned.
>
> Changing one's vocabulary helps, but alas it is no
> substitute for understanding and thinking clearly.
> And for that, I find the giveaway/nongiveaway
> distinction far, far more important -- yet hitherto
> completely unmarked with a terminological distinction
> of its own.
--
[CC] Counter-copyright:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cc/cc.html
I reserve no rights restricting copying, modification or
distribution of this incidentally recorded communication.
Original authorship should be attributed reasonably, but
only so far as such an expectation might hold for usual
practice in ordinary social discourse to which one holds no
claim of exclusive rights.
Received on Tue Jul 23 2002 - 16:58:38 BST