Is Copyright a Human Right?
On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is a very interesting document which many people, unfortunately, are not familiar with.
Of particular interest, for the purposes of this discussion, is Article 27, which deals with the human rights with regard to culture.
Article 27.
(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
Essentially, the second right that is voiced in this particular article is the right to Copyright.
As part of this discussion, we should mention the organization Youth for Human Rights, who are dedicated to the education of children in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They have produced, and have available for download a series of PSAs on each of the Human Rights of the Declaration, suitably simplified for Children.
Here is the link to their PSA for Right 27
Given the arguments about downloads and music and movie piracy, the fundamental question has to be asked:
Is Copyright a Human Right?
posted by Ema Zee @ 8:03 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
... However;
The right to give away your work is also implied by a Human Right to Copyright.
Zach,
Your logic only works if you consider copyright to be property. Can you really own an idea?
Imagine how poorer the world would be if copyrights, patents, trademarks, etc were treated as property all along. The wheel would be patented. Letters would be trademarked. Fire would require a license fee.
I think treating ideas as property is inherently wrong. It's also in contradiction to modern copyright law. For example, ever since the Statute of Anne (the first modern copyright law), copyright terms have been limited in duration. Does that sound like property to you? You can own it for a few years but then you lose possession?
How anyone can interpret this section of the UDoHR as saying copyrights are a human right is absurd. Copyrights have nothing to do with "moral and material interests".
In fact, the preceeding line of the UDoHR appears to argue *against* the existence of copyrights:
"Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits."
Copyrights (and other IP laws) *deny* others the right to freely participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
You couldn't have picked a worse piece of work to try and support the concept of copyrights
Yes, it is. But I don't believe we need to enact somewhat dictatorial laws enforcing them. The only reason that the RIAA gets away with what they get away with is because of a small clause in copyright law that permits them to sue for monetary amounts that aren't quantitative but qualitative.
Most artists just want a basic middle class standard of living with a few luxuries, because they're artists their real passion is art, not greed. That being said, they do often get ripped off and exploited, which is sad.
But, c'est la vis.
I totally agree with the above. Patents are a blatant affront to liberty. Copyrights can be contractual, so between the two parties, they can be legit. But third parties shouldn't be affected by them.
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