My concerns with having a register of copyrighted items is that it jeapordises or works contrary to the idea that people can make the same idea independently. If there is a registered item of a blue square 16 px by 16px in a specific colour, how do i make the same shape and register that? What happens? is it considered a duplication of one idea and blocked or is it considered 2 independent copyrighted ideas. Registering copyright shifts the model to something closer to patent registration which is a debacle.
I think reform should be looking at the shared roles people have with regard to a work. Imagine a photo of a child. The contributors to that work would include the child, the parent, the context, the photographer. Copyright is a single point of value proposition which can only recognise the photographer as the copyright owner. Other participants in creation are devalued and have less power and choice about how their contribution is used. Same kind of questions around ultrasound images which are often owned by the organisation which owned the equipment. This means people are not supposed to post their own ultrasounds online. This means that the means of production owns our right to express ourselves. Having systemic ownership of the right to voice is a dangerous path imho. Copyright is not a good fit for a networked age We need a new model which recognises shared roles and contributions to works and therefore different kinds of choice around use of the images. Single source of value models are likely to aggregate control to the groups which are best funded to represent their own inderests, ie away from the diffues and unfunded social functions of information in our society. Unreflective pursuit of a model which has served in a print context is having direct costs on fundamental values around freedom and right to participate and 'speak'. Janet _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
