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Comment by marbletiles | Hacker News Reader

Just as a data point -- it is an inalienable human right, at least as defined by the UN.

Article 27 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights:

(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

(Not that this by any means justifies or demands anything like the copyright regime we have now, let alone this ridiculous power-grab extension of it. And people are of course free to waive their rights at any time.)

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The UN Declaration of Human Rights is a horrible document. It convolutes Negative and Positive Rights, and this is just a ridiculous one. How does a right like this work? If I write a book do I get royalties and exclusive rights to it forever? If I discover a new scientific law should I get royalties for anything invention that uses it forever? It just doesn't make sense, the sooner we get rid of copyright and to a large extent patents the better the world will be.

The UN is doomed to failure because of its twin, conflicting, missions.

On one hand, it aims to safeguard the freedom and dignity of people throughout the world. Doing so sometimes requires using force against oppressive governments.

Yet on the other hand, the UN seeks to protect the sovereignty of the world's nations. How can it protect the sovereignty of a nation against whom it is fighting due to its other mission?

When its soul is built on two mutually contradictory ideals, it can never be anything but a schizophrenic wreck with at least one of those ideals (and more likely, both of them).

Agreed, I have many problems with the UN. I think that it should be broken up into two main bodies.

1. All the traditional non profit work: WHO, UNICEF, etc -- focus on that and leave the politics out. 2. Political function -- it votes on nothing, and merely serves a forum for countries to discuss issues; all treaties are then signed between those countries the UN is not involved.

"should I get royalties for anything invention that uses it forever?"

It says your interests are entitled some protection, but doesn't specify method or compensation.

I find it rather disturbing when someone wants to throw away the UN Declaration of Human Rights because it protects some interests that are against yours.

I want to throw it out, because I don't believe it matters. I think it is a bad document, and it all it does is cheapen the notion of human rights. Of course I agree that some of the rights it outlines are correct, but the document on the whole is a mess.

Here are some examples: Article 23, Article 24, Article 25, Article 26, Article 27, Article 30.

I think it's goals are good, I think they overreached.

But enforcing that law means breaking an other inalienable human right; that of privacy. And I'd say that law is more important.

Actually, the right to privacy isn't entirely guaranteed (nor is it a law; it is however, generally guaranteed by law). Your right to privacy can easily be suspended if there is reasonable suspicion that you committed a crime, for example, so that a search for evidence can take place.

As a later commenter said, the real point is that the human rights as declared in 1948 were no different (in form and style) to the treaty under discussion here. It was a group of countries getting together to decide the standards in which governments agree to treat their citizens- and each other.

It should also be noted that many of the articles there are broken or ignored- and this treaty seems to ignore Article 6: "Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law." which would be suspended given some of the leaked terms.

Can't believe you had 0 on this. Great comment.

It's for the courts to decide that balance, our opinions on the merits are irrelevant

The second amendment falsifies this statement. The only reason our opinions are irrelevant, is because of complacency and the inevitable slide towards tyranny that every world power faces as it ages. The government feels no threat from the people and therefore feels comfortable in selling our freedoms to the highest bidder. If the populous where not so complacent or indoctrinated then our leaders would think twice before leveraging our rights against us. This is a simple concept that the founding fathers understood all to well. They knew the constitution was a piece of paper and that individuals in the government would always look at it as such.

complacency and the inevitable slide towards tyranny

Look, I just don't agree with you that we are inevitably sliding towards tyranny.

If you struggled like I do to consider that the Man could organise His way out of a paper bag, let alone subjugate us all with tyranny, you might chill out on some of these issues.

Not every battle is worth fighting to the steps of Capitol Hill for, and well, in my opinion this Copyright stuff will get sorted out okay. There are big players on both sides of the argument. I cannot imagine Google being too happy about this Treaty.

>Look, I just don't agree with you that we are inevitably sliding towards tyranny.

You may not, but history repeats itself and human history is filled with a lot more tyranny than gilded ages. Hell we are only 200 years out of it now. Rome who we modeled ourselves after slid into it and imploded. So all historical relevance leads one to logically consider that it is a slightly higher than average possibility that we will repeat the cycle of history. Did we do so much better this time?

>If you struggled like I do to consider that the Man could organize His way out of a paper bag, let alone subjugate us all with tyranny.

It's happening all around the globe as we speak. It does not take much effort to find tyranny everywhere you look. Just because the 1st world has grown comfortable and detached does not mean that the 3rd world does not still experience it. Many times from 1st world people that are propping up the tyrants.

>Not every battle is worth fighting to the steps of Capitol Hill

Yes it is this is how tyranny works, the slow erosion of rights. One of the greatest quotes ever penned was by Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller in which he said:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist; Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist; Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist; Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew; Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

This was in response to the Nazi's tyrannical rule of Germany.

The point being, slow erosion of rights and targeting of other groups is the modus operandi of oppression. It has to be checked at every advance or it becomes that much more difficult to resist.

Have you ever noticed that not one President has ever repealed any powers gained by the executive branch and many times oversteps the allotted powers they are given. Make no mistake about it absolute power corrupts absolutely.

It is human nature, the founding fathers new it and tried to set up a system that would leave it in check. Unfortunately, with the erosion of the state governments and militias as a counterweight and the devastation that Europe felt in 1 and 2 it left the US executive branch with the legislative branch as it's only opposition and much like the senate of Rome we can see how well that counterweight worked.

So you can not agree, but you are disagreeing with a lot of historical evidence to the contrary and are pinning your hopes on the fact that this time above all the rest we got it right.

Me I will remain a paranoid whack job like the founding fathers where and the Jews of Germany where and like the Taiwanese are today.

This is an excellent comment, and you are correct that we forget too quickly the abuses of the past. Like Socrates' Apology.

I am reminded of the post a while ago regarding a man whose family was hounded out of their home at gunpoint by the Feds, and their lives systematically destroyed until he was forced to move out of the country, because one of the companies buying hosting from the host he had founded was found doing fraudulent business.

If we're lucky, we'll die before the countries we love turn to tyranny. Will our children? Will our grandchildren?

>If we're lucky, we'll die before the countries we love turn to tyranny. Will our children? Will our grandchildren?

I understand the sentiment, but when I look into the face of my son. I hope every day that if it should ever come to armed resistance that it comes to pass in my time and not his. I am a pacifist above all else, but I would rather have the moral obligation and the wages of war payed by my hand rather than that of my namesake.

He did not create this mess and it weighs on my mind that this is the legacy that I will leave him. We should all be ashamed of the legacy we are leaving to our children and if our legacy to them is tyranny, oppression and struggle then may we all be damned.

The Man is very competent he just has different goals from you. His goals are to maximize his own individual profit.

You may wish to improve the world or something, but The Man is just a collection of self-interested people responding to economic pressure.

But 27.1 says: Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

Which is directly in opposition to copyright. UDHR seems to stand on the fence on this issue.

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