On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 12:59 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemow...@gmail.com>wrote:
> Nathan, 22/02/2012 18:38: > > Thanks for the heads up, Robert. This boils down to a fairly simple >> question for me - do I want to participate in the political >> disenfranchisement of Iranian (and other) authors and photographers? They >> have few rights of political participation in their own nations, and no >> control over whether their government chooses to sign international >> treaties. It's wrong of Wikipedia to take advantage of the unfortunate >> situation of the citizens of these nations by regarding them as having no >> rights in their own work. >> > > Could you please define "take advantage"? Or, how such taking advantage > could harm them (it's not clear to me). I thought it was more a way to > "keep Wikipedia legal" also in such countries, to facilitate participation > from there. > > Nemo I'm not sure how to explain that more clearly without describing concepts you are undoubtedly already familiar with, so bear with me for a moment. Copyright provides authors with a right of ownership and control over their work for a generally fixed period; the idea is to give them exclusivity for their own benefit for that period, after which the public has more or less unlimited rights to their work. We can agree that the domestic and international copyright regime is grounded in principles that are economic, legal and moral. There are a small number of nations that refuse to join this regime, and they share some traits - they are often failed states, or states with limited or no meaningful rights of citizen political participation. As a result, while Iranian artists may desire to benefit from their work internationally, they may not be able to - and they have no real recourse in their political system. In a moral sense, if we treat authors poorly because they live in a country where they are treated poorly, not only are we reinforcing that poor treatment - we are benefiting from their disadvantage. If Iranian authors were from any other of the vast majority of Berne signatory nations, they would have full rights to control and benefit from their work internationally. Should we benefit from their lack of freedom, over which they have little influence? Or should we make the ethical decision to afford them the same rights and interests that are afforded to virtually everyone else in the world? Nathan _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
