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The Berne Convention only took effect in the US in 1989, well after Victor Hugo was dead and quite thoroughly decomposed. (I mention the US because the Internet

by geofft 7y ago

The Berne Convention only took effect in the US in 1989, well after Victor Hugo was dead and quite thoroughly decomposed. (I mention the US because the Internet Archive is in the US and subject to US law, as is the Author's Guild. The National Emergency Library is tied to the duration of the US national emergency.) The idea that the majority of people in the US are dissatisfied with the 1989 changes to US copyright law is a pretty strong one, and is at least nominally at odds with the fact that it finally got passed after a century - how did it finally become time to pass it if people were against it? (Take care to distinguish opposing the law from being indifferent to it - certainly there are many laws that do not affect me that I'm indifferent to, such as the Railroad Retirement Act of 1974, and even if the majority of the country feels as I do, it would not really follow that that law is illegitimate.) Yes, it's a serious problem when there are laws that the majority of citizens find illegitimate - but the contrapositive of that is that most of the time the default assumption is that for any given law, it probably is legitimate.

hilbert42 7y ago
"The Berne Convention only took effect in the US in 1989, well after Victor Hugo was dead and quite thoroughly decomposed. <...>" But I'm not within the US jurisdiction nor are many millions of others who use the Internet Archive. (Incidentally, I have been using the IA almost since its inception). The fact that the IA is US-based and serves the world is a copyright minefield that I won't go into here. Suffice to say (as I'd imagine many in the US would do) one plays off the differences in copyright law across different jurisdictions to one's own advantage. The fallout from this incident, whatever it may be, will likely influence rules and laws in other jurisdictions but it won't be all of them. The somewhat peculiar history of US copyright law and of the US being 'out' of international affairs then aggressively back 'in' them again perplexes and annoys many outside the US (it's been essentially US corporations who have caused most of the nasty disputes over the past two or three decades). My reference to Victor Hugo is important because he was the principle center point and figurehead at the start of modern copyright law. Whilst copyright law essentially goes back to the British Statute of Anne of 1710, it was Victor Hugo and his French colleagues that got the ball rolling which ended up with the First Berne Convention. Hugo wasn't alone, around that time there were many others including the English duo Gilbert & Sullivan who were struggling rampant copyright piracy in the US and they went to considerable lengths to overcome the problem, the most notable of which was in 1879 when they took the Savoy Opera Company holus bolus to New York and premiered The Pirates of Penzance. This strategy was only partially successful in that US opera companies continue to pirate their works for years after that. What makes Hugo stand out was his arrogant and aggressive dog-in-the-manger attitude. He had a superior notions of self as well as a highly tuned Francophone sense of indignity when it came to copyright breaches of his works. Berne became a crusade for Hugo, he set the aggressive embittered tone that's plagued copyright law and negotiations ever since.

by geofft 7y ago

hilbert42 7y ago

"The Berne Convention only took effect in the US in 1989, well after Victor Hugo was dead and quite thoroughly decomposed. <...>" But I'm not within the US jurisdiction nor are many millions of others who use the Internet Archive. (Incidentally, I have been using the IA almost since its inception). The fact that the IA is US-based and serves the world is a copyright minefield that I won't go into here. Suffice to say (as I'd imagine many in the US would do) one plays off the differences in copyright law across different jurisdictions to one's own advantage. The fallout from this incident, whatever it may be, will likely influence rules and laws in other jurisdictions but it won't be all of them. The somewhat peculiar history of US copyright law and of the US being 'out' of international affairs then aggressively back 'in' them again perplexes and annoys many outside the US (it's been essentially US corporations who have caused most of the nasty disputes over the past two or three decades). My reference to Victor Hugo is important because he was the principle center point and figurehead at the start of modern copyright law. Whilst copyright law essentially goes back to the British Statute of Anne of 1710, it was Victor Hugo and his French colleagues that got the ball rolling which ended up with the First Berne Convention. Hugo wasn't alone, around that time there were many others including the English duo Gilbert & Sullivan who were struggling rampant copyright piracy in the US and they went to considerable lengths to overcome the problem, the most notable of which was in 1879 when they took the Savoy Opera Company holus bolus to New York and premiered The Pirates of Penzance. This strategy was only partially successful in that US opera companies continue to pirate their works for years after that. What makes Hugo stand out was his arrogant and aggressive dog-in-the-manger attitude. He had a superior notions of self as well as a highly tuned Francophone sense of indignity when it came to copyright breaches of his works. Berne became a crusade for Hugo, he set the aggressive embittered tone that's plagued copyright law and negotiations ever since.