wwp@yahoogroups.com:
Some legal aspects
Carsten T. Rees 2008-Jun-02 21:31:00
Hello!
For the weekend I have been on a trip to Leipzig, so today I tried to catch up with all the
new entries in the list.
There are three points I would like to address:
1. As Eric Krause has pointed out earlier, there is a paragraph in the German copyright law
(Urheberrechtsgesetz, UrhG), which allows the display of artistic work from other authors,
it is paragraph 52, valid since 2003. Yet there are very restrictive clauses in this
paragraph, that need to be discussed with the laywers of the ZKM.
2. The only reason I know the details of this paragraph 52 of the UrhG is, that it had been
explained to me by members of the legal profession in a way, even a biologist can
understand it ;-) So I can assure you, every single of our steps with the ZKM is closely
watched by and discussed with jurists, who support us.
3. Yes, I can understand how deeply some members of the list are hurt, by the way their
intellectual property is robbed from them. What a week phrase "intellectual property" is ?
in German there exists a phrase that can be translated into "intellectual children", that so
much better describes some of the emotional aspects. And yes there has been damage
done to the WWP. But is the stringent logical consequence of all this, to start a law suite
against the ZKM? I would say no. Despite the actions of the ZKM, let us behave civilized. So
I would like to strongly support the way Yuval has chosen. The laywers of the ZKM are
starting to understand the situation with all its possible legal consequences. They now
have to communicate this with the management of the ZKM. Therefore I would like to ask
you for some patience. BTW choosing to go to court would not speed up the whole thing.
In German court suites like that can easily take months.
Greetings
Carsten