[Foundation-l] NYT: Who owns the law? (Noam Cohen)

Tue Sep 30 22:44:15 UTC 2008

On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 8:12 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
<cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:
> John Vandenberg wrote:
>> On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 7:14 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
>> <cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> geni wrote:
>>>
>>>> 2008/9/30 John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com>:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Absurd.  Most recently written copyright laws are very clear that laws
>>>>> and judicial opinions are in the public domain.  add Israel and
>>>>> Azerbaijan to the growing list appearing in this thread.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Okey. As I've said I'm more familiar with British based law than
>>>> French based (is Azerbaijan Russian based?). The problem is that
>>>> British does not have PD laws and has never done so which means that
>>>> anyone with an English law based legal system who hasn't updated the
>>>> relevant sections will not have PD laws. Rather a lot of countries
>>>> have English law based legal systems.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Not okay. This is just absurd. It is ludicrous to assume that every
>>> country which is based on English law, will have jumped over the cliff
>>> after it, and balked from safeguarding itself from copyright silliness.
>>>
>>
>> It was in 1911 that commonwealth countries were given the option of
>> defining their own copyright laws.  As far as I know, all have
>> radically revised their law, but many still have the 1911 law in
>> effect for works before the new laws were enacted.  Wikisource also
>> has a project to produce a text of the 1911 copyright act.  We need
>> help proofreading this vital law.
>>
>> http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:The_copyright_act,_1911,_annotated.djvu
>>
>> The UK gov only provides a revised edition, which doesnt help us
>> understand what copyright law is in effect in commonwealth countries
>> which enacted their own laws at different years, and thus based on
>> different editions of the UK law.  Here is the revised law:
>>
>> http://www.opsi.gov.uk/RevisedStatutes/Acts/ukpga/1911/cukpga_19110046_en_1
>>
>> The UK gov only provide originals for a small subset of laws prior to 1998.
>>
>> http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts.htm
>> --
>> John V
>>
>>
>
> Heh. This does sort of make me interested in a further enquiry though...
>
> Are all the countries which base their law on the english system still
> members of the commonwealth?

Eygpt was granted independence in 1922.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Egyptian_Copyright_Law

South Africa became a republic in 1961.

More can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Nations#Termination_of_membership
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Commonwealth_of_Nations

> For that matter, could not, and did not some countries base their legal
> system on the english laws, and never ever were members of the
> kingdom/empire/commonwealth in the first place? I could easily imagine a
> country devising a legal system modeled after the English legal
> framework, which actually never came under the crown itself.

Perhaps, however the 1911 Copyright Act was primarily about divesting
a measured amount of British power over the colonies.  See they still
wanted the colonies to pay their copyright dues, so they didnt let
them enact any law ... the colonies still had to respect copyright,
and this was at a time when international copyright was first being
agreed upon.  The UK signed the Berne Convention in 1887, the 1911
copyright act was when much of it was enacted, but large parts only
came into force with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of _1988_,
100 years later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literary_and_Artistic_Works
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literary_and_Artistic_Works_(Berlin_Act,_1908)

--
John Vandenberg