[P2P-F] cc to be made illegal in portugal

Thu Jul 21 17:15:53 CEST 2011

Michel and Miguel:

On Wednesday 20 July 2011 10:42:40 Miguel Afonso Caetano wrote:
> Hi Michel,
> 
> 2011/7/20 Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>:
> > http://www.technollama.co.uk/is-portugal-about-to-make-creative-commons-i
> > llegal
> > 
> > Dear Miguel,
> > 
> > is this something you could report on for us?
> 
> I think there was an overreaction. I'm afraid the whole thing was
> somewhat blown out of proportion. This proposal only concerned the
> compensation collected by the Portuguese collective copyright agencies
> with every media that enables the copying of content in exchange for
> the right granted to consumers to make private copies of the CDs, DVDs
> and books they legitimately bought. Basically, it would disallow
> authors who want to receive that compensation to publish works with CC
> licenses. But since those authors have already renounced the right to
> receive any compensation for any copy/reproduction made for private,
> non-commercial uses, this proposal wouldn't apply to them. A few weeks
> later Creative Commons Portugal released a statement corroborating
> this interpretation:
> http://www.inteli.pt/uploads/cms/20110617183817_Proposta_de_Lei_da_Copia_Pr
> ivada_NAO_ilegaliza_licencas_CC.pdf.

The devil is in the details. The *purpose* of that text in the proposition is 
to make the author legally unable to abdicate or transfer its levies rights. 
CC 3.0 avoids that because it has provisions for such a case, basicly stating 
that "if one can't adbicate from those levies, than this license doesn't try 
to do so". *But*:
1) AFAICS, prior versions still have the problem;
2) This still affect other licenses, from what I can understand (GDL, for 
instance);
3) This is an effective showstopper for those wanting to give their copyright 
to the Public Domain (which might very well have been SPA's hidden agenda on 
this clause, if we take into account the rumours).

> The biggest problem is that Portuguese authors who want to
> ease the work of collecting royalties from the commercial exploitation
> of their works and at the same time have those same works published
> with Creative Commons licenses can't sign in to SPA because basically
> this collective society doesn't allow its members to establish any
> contract with other organizations besides SPA:
> http://www.spautores.pt/destaques/vamos-penalizar-cooperadores-que-nao-cump
> rem-a-regra-da-exclusividade-contratual. In other words, they have to
> individually negotiate with interested parties.

Let me just add a little note: while the actual Portuguese Law states (and 
well) that an author *is* the author (legally) just by creating, and is not 
forced to join any collective agency or association in order to be seen as 
such, there are some *rights* authors have that can only be excercises through 
such a body.

> Anyway, since this proposal was revealed a lot of changes occurred in
> the Portuguese political scenario: the general elections that happened
> in June 5th brought a new coalition government situated at the
> center-right wing of the political spectrum. Nonetheless, I'm afraid
> that the real danger is yet to come. That is because the new
> government has already announced that it's his intention to present
> not only a new law regarding private copies but a second law against
> piracy:
> http://tek.sapo.pt/noticias/internet/governo_promete_leis_para_pirataria_e
> _copia_p_1164132.html. I really don't know what to expect from the latter,
> but I think the former will be just a rehash of the first proposal with
> the most
> controversial articles striped but still expanding the tax for private
> copies to storage media like external and internal HDs, cellphones
> with multimedia players, iPods, tablets, etc. This is the same kind of
> law that has generated a strong opposition in Spain against the
> government and SGAE ("canon digital").

From what I've been able to understand via my work on ANSOL regarding this 
matters, in terms of Culture the new government has the same agenda as the old 
one: both agree with the exact same text for the private copy law (even if in 
the end they'll show a slightly different wording, just because they wouldn't 
want to show that the other party sometimes does things as they think should 
be done), and both want an anti-piracy law that implements (sorry, we still 
don't have many details on this, it seems that our contacts with several 
institutions were suddenly severed...) french-like laws, including an HADOPI-
like institution and 3-strikes.

Best regards,
-- 
Marcos Marado