[License-discuss] [License-review] The Right of Display

[Russell McOrmond]

Responding to Lawrence as I mostly agree with what he is saying, and want
to add to it.

On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 6:03 PM Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com> wrote:

> What I mean is that we are indeed speaking about two different works. As I
> said before, one is the projector and the other is the movie. They are
> related only in the sense that a projector displays movies and doesn't
> display its software, and the software doesn't reveal the literary plot of
> the copyrighted work that is the movie. But without both, I have neither.
>


There are two different things being conflated by other people.  In
political conversations (which this is), this is common as a way to
transfer someone elses rights to oneself.


a) The question of when software is used as a viewer of art created by a
human.  In this case there is two "works", the work of art and the software
which is projecting it.  Running the software is not a public performance
of the software, but a public performance of the art work.  Singing the
source code might be interpreted as a performance of the software itself (I
remember all the DECSS artwork), but I seriously doubt this is what people
are trying to reference.

b) Then there is computer generated art, which I believe falls into the
same debate as the Monkey selfie copyright dispute
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute .  Computers,
not being humans, cannot be considered authors for the purpose of
copyright.  We can go further and suggest that the only thing that
justifies copyright is to protect the rights of human authors (See: United
Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights article 27 which is the best
articulation of the balance of copyright).   While there are special
economic interests who want other criteria for copyrightability (money
invested, ownership of hardware, because they want to pickpocket someone,
whatever), most countries have been pushing against that transition of what
the purpose of copyright is.

There may be some science fiction future where sentient extraterrestrials
might be extended copyright, but I see no purpose to extending it beyond
humans at this point in human history.  And especially not to automated
processes or AI.

-- 
Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>

Please help us tell the Canadian Parliament to protect our property rights
as owners of Information Technology. Sign the petition! http://l.c11.ca/ict/

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media player from my cold dead hands!" http://c11.ca/own
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