[d@DCC] The petition

[Chris Brand]

Russell wrote :
>  I'm still quite uncomfortable mentioning intermediaries in "careful
>balance between the rights of creators, intermediaries and the public" as
>I don't believe they should be thought of as having independant rights at
>all.  They are just the "hired help"  and are useful only as far as they
>are hired by creators or the public.  They can obviously 'buy' rights like
>material rights in copyright from creators.

I've been having this same discussion out-of-band with Jason :-)

Firstly, the point about intermediaries not having independent rights - I
don't think this is actually true. Look at the Copyright Act :
s.18 says "the maker of a sound recording has a copyright"
s.21 says "a broadcaster has a copyright in the communication signals".

So the Act does grant them rights. Jason suggested that these rights are
arguably granted because they're creating works - I can see lawyers
having a great time over that one :-)

Having said that, I think that politically it's giving away something
to include "intermediaries" in this paragraph. They are included later,
where I think we're not conceding anything. So overall, I agree that
they should be removed from this first paragraph (and indeed have made
that change in the wiki version).

Chris


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