Canada, and, finally, the US, are signatories
to the worldwide Berne Convention.
I have not been keeping track of the
posts / thread leading to your comment(s), below, but I can tell you that
(1) the information on the hyperlink in the message preceding yours IS
quite valid; and, (2) if ANYONE --regardless of the organization type--
seeks to obscure or otherwise remove a copyright notice (either the circled
"c" or a "c" in parentheticals) it is an AUTOMATIC
violation of the law. Period. The US penalties are USD50K PER copyright
notice that is removed. E.g., if your work was 20 pages in length, has
a copyright notice on each of the twenty pages, and has been reproduced
with your copyright not intact fifty times ... the LAWFUL penalty would
be USD5 Million!!
This is not hyperbole. It is fact. Period.
CEFACT, in this circumstance, must immediately cease and desist -- getting
a preliminary injunction to stop ALL activities would take even a semi-incompetent
IP lawyer less than half a day... Most of that spent in the drive time
to / from court and in serving the fools.
There is no "ex post facto"
either -- can't be unilaterally changing the rules after everyone's agreed
to them. That would be tantamount to fraud.
Intellectual Property (IP) rights are
pretty objective / clear cut. And, as you can possibly garner, my feelings
are equally if not more strong in this arena.
===================
Jeffrey J Silden : Silden SOFTWARE Solutions!, Inc.
5039 Rubio Avenue : Encino CA 91436-1139 USA
Voice - 818/788.2858 : Fax - 818/788.9858
- It's the silence
between the notes
that makes the music
-- JJ Silden
===================
Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail message, including any attachments,
is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential
and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure
or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient,
please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the
original message.
I also have [extremely] strong feelings about the use of my work and the
removal of my name as a contributor. I feel this is utterly illegal
and
possibly actionable. The policies of CEFACT seem to be changing with
no
or little input from the members who are doing a lot of the actual work.
According to Canadian Law, any work developed by a person is subject to
defacto (also referred toas "common law rights" ) copyright protection,
whether explicitly registered or not. Since my contributions were
created in Canada, they are subject to Canadian copyright law and I have
certain rights pursuant to those laws.
CEFACT has changed its' copyright policy without due notification to the
authors of certain works and has used it without permission. This
was
done more than halfway through an established process we agreed to when
we joined.
I hereby request that you immediately make public the full details of
the reason for CEFACT changing its process for removing the credits of
the authors, including the following specific details:
- a list of those who were present and commenced the procedure to
change the policy
- the reason for changing the policy
- under what legal exemption CEFACT felt it can circumvent international
copyright law
- the procedure itself that CEFACT executives feels they are entitled
to change the copyright policy without permission of the authors
- the details of any vote or other parlimentry procedure for doing such
-a copy of the minutes of the discussion held prior to any vote.
If CEFACT has a truly transparent policy, this should notbe a problem.