Chilean Miner Copyrights Note Announcing Trapped Miners Were OK
from the copyright-gone-mad dept
Reader Matt Jones points us to the news of the latest in copyright insanity. It turns out that one of the miners, Jose Ojeda, who was trapped in the Chilean mine had sent a note up, reading "Estamos bien en el refugio los 33" ("We are okay in the refuge, the 33 of us"). That note was found 17 days after the mine collapsed, and is what gave people hope that they'd eventually be able to rescue the miners, as they obviously did quite some time later. The note was a sign of hope and Chilean President Sebastian Pinera started handing out copies of the note to various people, such as the British Queen and prime minister while he was visiting. Apparently, a writer in Chile was somehow offended by this and registered the copyright on the note for Ojeda. Now that the miner is safe, he's demanding the note back, while Pinera is claiming that it's a part of national heritage.All I can think is that this is yet another sign of just how ridiculous copyright law has become in the eyes of most people. They really do think it's all about "owning" words. Copyright is to create incentives for creation -- and I don't think it helped give Ojeda the incentive for creation. I'm not sure how Chile's copyright law works, but even if it has moral rights (requiring attribution of authorship), again, I don't believe anyone here is trying to pass off the note as being written by anyone but Ojeda. Furthermore, is there really any "creative" element to the note that should be deserving of copyright protection? This is just blatant "ownership" culture, where a note that was used to give the world hope is now being fought over using a silly law that should have nothing to do with it.
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Filed Under: chile, copyright, jose ojeda, miners, notes
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You bastard!
I don't know how you sleep at night.
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Story = $
Huneeus, the writer said, "This phrase is a work of art," he said, "and one couldn't choose better words. Using the brain is a way of making money."
Anybody else sick of the Chilean miner story yet?
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Give him his note back, and put him back in the mine.
Call it the cost of doing business...
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"Estamos bien en el refugio los 33"
"Fuck you, Pablo Huneeus."
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Give him the original, keep a copy in the national archives, deed done. Oh, deny the copyright, too.
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As for the contents of the note itself, U.S. law (and, given the Berne Convention, I'm pretty confident Chilean law too) would not extend any rights to the author of the note, to limit copying or anything else. The importance of the words aren't relevant--the work has to support at least some measure of creativity beyond simple utility. The contents of note, from a copyright standpoint, are not much different than a shopping list or phone message, which are clearly not within the subject matter of copyright.
That someone registered the contents of the note is irrelevant. People register stuff all the time that copyright doesn't actually support--if it ever came to a legal challenge, that is. The Copyright Office doesn't review for originality, creativity, and the other elements required to sustain a copyright if challenged.
If's fine (and correct) to be outraged about the state of copyright and efforts to abuse the law to extract benefits that the law isn't meant to protect.
But that doesn't appear to be what this story is about.
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> depend on aspects of Chilean law
Under U.S. law, the miner purposely abandoned the property-- indeed his intent was for someone else to find it and take it-- and therefore he would retain no property rights in it.
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Either way, I would think that it would fail the requirements under Chilean copyright law to be a work of "inteligencia". The threshold is much lower under Chilean (and Berne which barely defines anything) law than US law, though, it would seem.
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Here, have a cookie.
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"Copyright is to create incentives for creation" -- WRONG.
Incentive is usually a mysterious personal alchemy, but *can* be in hopes of mere money, or even externally imposed: Let's send Mike down that hole and not let him come back up until he's written a truly masterful novel at least as long as War And Peace.
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Re: "Copyright is to create incentives for creation" -- WRONG.
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Chilean Law
But as the law states:
Which basically translates as; when a piece is part of the cultural heritage it may be used by anybody so long the author and original piece are recognized as such.
And I think there is a pretty strong case to argue for cultural heritage in this case.
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Re: Chilean Law
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Are you sure this is true in Chile?
You continue to appear to assumme the U.S Constitutions explanation for copyright in U.S law holds true for other nations, yet the history and evolution of copyright in other places was sometimes of censorship and government favouritism.
Your argument may be true of the U.S, but making reference to actions bound by other laws might not be so convincing.
So I wnet looking and found wikipedia has a summary of Chilean copyroght law which begins with the explaantion...
"aims to protect the economic and moral rights of Chilean authors and foreigners residing in Chile"
...which is not the U.S Constitutions claim to advance the useful arts.
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the note.
btw, I'm a composer and I've written a piece called Help Arrives and set it to images from the rescue in this multimedia presentation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N57X29-dWo
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the note.
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