Plagiarizing my Own Story??? Give me a break!!!!

I had a rather interesting situation arise this week concerning an article I had written. A client called me complaining that I had posted an article on my blog that I had written for him/her. I was accused of all kinds of things: plagiarism, theft, betrayal. I was also informed that the original idea for the subject of this article had come from this individual which meant that their rights on the idea superseded my own copyright on the creative expression of that idea (the article itself). There were the usual threats implied and otherwise.

I had a few ideas of my own on the matter, after picking myself up off the floor in disbelief. First of all as I had spent several days researching the subject and about half a day writing the article (alone I might add), there was no way to accuse me of plagiarism*. (It was my own article for heaven’s sake!!!) Second, unless I sold the exclusive rights to that article or otherwise disclaimed them (which I had not done) I retained all creative rights to that article. It matters not that someone else used that article on a “so called” copyrighted blog. (In fact as the author of the article I should have been credited on that blog, a requirement I did not invoke at the time nor will invoke.) The simple fact of the matter is that as a writer I posted the article as representative of the kind of work that I publish. It was a well researched and written piece and I was proud. There was no opportunity for personal gain other than as a writer as I in no way was involved with the target audience for that article.

With all that in mind, I began to wonder myself about artistic control, editorial control, and the like. So off I go again, this time to research a subject and to write an article about intellectual property rights, something that interests me as a writer and artist and should interest anyone involved in the expression of creative ideas.

I want to first define intellectual property and copyright and secondly I want to address the concept of idea-expression dichotomy before going into actual intellectual property rights themselves.

Noun: intellectual property
Intangible property that is the result of creativity (such as patents or trademarks or copyrights) 1

Intellectual property
n.
A product of the intellect that has commercial value,
including copyrighted property such as literary or artistic works, and
ideational property, such as patents, appellations of origin, business methods,
and industrial processes. 2

Intellectual property

Computing: Intellectual property (IP) The ownership
of ideas and control over the tangible or virtual representation of those ideas.
Use of another person's intellectual property may or may not involve royalty
payments or permission, but should always include proper credit to the
source.

Economics: Non-tangible property that is the result
of creativity such as copyrights and patents. 3

Noun: copyright
A document granting exclusive right to publish and sell literary or
musical or artistic work 1

Copyright n.
The legal right granted to an author, composer, playwright, publisher, or distributor to exclusive publication, production, sale, or distribution of a literary, musical,
dramatic, or artistic work. 2

Copyright
noun
A document granting exclusive right to publish and sell literary or
musical or artistic work. 3

This takes us to the subject of ideas. In short copyrights provide protection for the expression of an idea and not the idea itself. This is known as the Idea-Expression Dichotomy. This doctrine has held in literally hundreds of cases and is one of the most commonly used principles regarding copyright. Idea-Expression Dichotomy means that an author’s ideas go into public domain while their creative expression of those ideas remain the author’s to control. 4

A perfect example of this doctrine can be found in the United States Copyright Act 5 which was itself modeled after TRIPS and Berne, discussed below. A relevant portion of this act reads as follows:

In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend
to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept,
principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described,
explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work. 5

This specific distinction is at the heart of the issue between patents and copyrights. Were ideas to be protected under copyright law, then all inventors would have to do is create a copyrighted piece and then they could circumvent governing patent law.

In turning my attention to intellectual property rights themselves, I came across two important international agreements regarding intellectual property that govern world standards: what is known as the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) 6 and the Berne Convention 7 . Both of these agreements control nearly every country in the world and even developing nations such as Brazil, India, Korea and Thailand now recognize the automatic rights of authors over their own writing as a result of TRIPS and Berne.

In 1994 the World Trade Organization negotiated what is called the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) during the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Ratification of the TRIPS is a compulsory requirement for membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and any nation seeking to obtain access to world markets opened by the WTO must enact the strict intellectual property laws mandate by TRIPS. A few of those rights include:

• Copyright must be granted automatically and immediate to creation of material with no requirement for registration or renewal.


• Copyright terms for authors are for the term of their life plus 50 years after death.


• Copyright terms for films are set at 50 years and photographs at 25.


• National exceptions to copyright rights are to be tightly constrained.


• TRIPS rights must be equal for all persons in a member state with no benefits enjoyed by local citizens not available to nationals from any TRIPS country.

The Berne Convention of 1886 upon which TRIPS was based was an international treaty that is still in place to protect intellectual property rights. As with TRIPS, under Berne copyrights for creative works do not have to be declared, asserted, or registered. They are instead immediately in force upon creation (as soon as a work is “fixed”, that is, written or recorded on some physical medium). At that time the author is automatically entitled to all rights of copyright to include any derivative works until such time as the author explicitly disclaims those rights or until fifty years after his or her death.

I also found myself interested in the rights and privileges afforded to authors in particular. Authors under TRIPS and Berne have the right to:

• display their work publicly,


• import or export their work,


• produce and sell copies of their work,


• create derivative works,


• sell or assign any of these rights to others.

In conclusion, I have found in life that the old clique that there are not any problems, only solutions holds true. I have additionally learned that any situation can be turned into a positive learning experience. Through the travails of dealing with a disgruntled client asserting ridiculous claims to my own writing I have learned a valuable lesson in copyright law and international treaties governing intellectual property. In the future I will not be so quick to entertain absurd claims that someone else owns my writing in the absence of a disclaimer by me of those rights.


Footnotes:

http://www.wordwebonline.com/
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/
http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/intellectual+property
http://www.edwardsamuels.com/copyright/beyond/articles/ideapt1-20.htm
http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/copyright.table.html
http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/27-trips_01_e.htm
http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html

Author’s notes:

1. I might note here that I still have the core research for this article and I uploaded the article onto my client’s blog from my own computer at my own home, a fact verifiable through internet records.


2. And I had a friend proofread the article providing an e-mail record of creation superseding any blog’s claim to ownership.


3. I might add this is all rather odd to have to get into considering the fact the client was and may still be a friend.

Additional Reading:

1. Works Unprotected by Copyright Law, i.e. titles, short phrases, IDEAS http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/unprotected.html
   

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Humanitarian Mission: Santa Fe Argentina Toba Community

The Pay it Forward Project (PIFP) was established to assist in rebuilding the lives, self worth, and spirit of individuals living in developing nations. The PIFP works in countries that have fallen victim to natural disasters providing assistance so that people can pursue gainful livelihood following such crisis. The PIFP uses donations to provide sewing machines in furtherance of this goal while also addressing needs associated with clothing, food, and adequate housing.

The PIFP is currently working on such a project in the “Las Lomas” neighborhood of Santa Fe, Argentina with an indigenous group of people known as the Toba. The 133 families of this community were part of a larger group of over 70,000 people who were temporarily displaced during recent flooding in April of this year. Their economic survival depends heavily on the success of this project and the need for financial assistance is great.

The Toba, sometimes referred to as the Toba-Pilagá, are an indigenous group that originally inhabited the Gran Chaco area of Argentina. The Toba are a traditional, nomadic people that up until the 1930’s were a hunter-gatherer group. Economic activity was seasonally dependent with the men traditionally bringing meat, fish, and honey into the community while the women provided fruit, vegetables, wood, and water. The women were also charged with maintaining the household and tending the children.

In 1875 a campaign known as the “Conquest of the Desert” was initiated by Argentinean General, and later President, Julio Roca to pacify the Argentinean indigenous peoples and take over their native lands. Although groups like the Toba fought back, this military campaign made way for the influx of colonists, missionaries and cattle ranchers that settled on traditional Toba land. This settlement by foreigners severely affected the mobility of these nomadic people and eventually led to difficulty in making a living from the land. This situation was worsened with the introduction of agriculture by Anglican missionaries in the 1930’s.

An additional goal of the “Conquest of the Desert” campaign was to organize surviving indigenous people such as the Toba into a cheap labor force for timber companies and sugar plantations. The Toba were ripe for such exploitation by the 1930’s as a lack of mobility and increasing dependence on foreign goods created a need for seasonal agricultural work. Unable to hunt for extended periods, the Toba eventually settled into communities and outside agricultural work replaced traditional tribal economic activity.

Urban Toba settlements began to appear in the 1950’s in cities such as Resistencia, Rosario, Santa Fe, and even Buenos Aires. Those communities lay on the periphery of those cities and were locally referred to as villa miseries, or miserable villages, due to their high level of poverty. Unprecedented flooding beginning in the 1980’s and mechanization in the 1990’s left many Toba unemployed and in 1996 any Toba willing to migrate to the Santa Fe Province were bought one-way tickets by the Gran Chaco provincial government. In 2001 a survey undertaken of households with at least one member recognizing indigenous ancestry showed that only about 1,516 Toba individuals followed a traditional lifestyle and community. In 2004 a complimentary survey taken (with involvement in design and data gathering by indigenous people) indicated an overall estimated Toba population of 47,591 individuals.

Today the economic practices of the Toba population of Santa Fe, as in other cities, are subsistence oriented with both men and women engaged in trying to find a way to make a living. The Toba Community of Santa Fe lacks any land, thus cultivation is unavailable and virtually all the inhabitants participate in the mainstream economy. The cacique, or community leader of this group, Carlos related to a PIFP member that: “We have no land to plant on. Precisely because of this, there is misery and hunger in our land... We are driven to suicide because we don’t mean anything”. Although work opportunities are greater in these urban environments than they are in Gran Chaco, most jobs are low paying, require no specialized skills, and provide little job security. In this setting the Toba are marginalized and discriminated against for being indigenous. In spite of this fact, they remain an easily exploited source of cheap labor to the benefit of the general populace of Santa Fe.

It is in this cultural and economic climate that the PIFP recently began its work co-jointly with the leadership council of the Toba of Santa Fe. While the PIFP has brought all the resources necessary for initiating the project, additional funds and resources are necessary to see this project actualize its full potential. Currently the project includes plans to create an industry based on the design and manufacture of clothing utilizing traditional Toba design in the style itself and fabric patterns. The use of Toba artisans in the manufacture of accessories such as handmade wooden buttons is also being studied. The PIFP is also working on the creation of training shops to assist the women in learning the design and manufacture of that clothing, and to teach them effective marketing strategies. The initial purchase of machinery as well as planning for this project has been achieved, but there is much yet to be accomplished.

The economic, cultural, and social survival of the Toba depends heavily on the success of this project and the need for outside assistance is great. Enhanced self -sustainability is the long range goal of this program and the PIFP and Toba leadership council believe this project is a good beginning.

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Photos from my humanitarian mission

Hello everyone. As most of you already know, I moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, in December of last year. I am working as a photographer, doing some freelance writing, some website design, and with a humanitarian organization. I recently returned from a mission with that group to the Santa Fe Province to work with an indigenous community there called the Tobas. They are only in Argentina and number less than 50,000.

Anyway, here are some photographs from my trip there if interested in checking them out:

http://whenwoods.spaces.live.com/photos/

Among other things the children there were remarkable. Even in such extreme poverty they seemed even happier than most children I find elsewhere in the world. I felt like the Pied Piper once I showed a couple of children the photographs of themselves on the screen on my digital camera. Before I knew it I had an entourage of about fifty to sixty children following me everywhere. I would take a couple of photos of a group of them and then kneel to show it to them and I would be immediately surrounded by the entire group. It was amazing…….. I would look up and literally only see a crowd of little excited faces……..no sky…….nothing but those dear faces.

So, I hope you all enjoy the photographs and that you all have a wonderful week.

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Maginations

Let me sing to you my song of love.
Thoughts emotions …
Vague in the instant
Yet clear in eternity.

Crystalline teardrop prisms fall,
A kaleidoscope of color, meaning…

He sits in his room, his asylum
Pondering, feeling, reaching out…

Has it all been a dream he wonders. I feel so great, so right, so true…

Echoes of the past…
Thoughts real in the moment
Yet untrue upon reflection.

Yes,
True,
Pure.

In an instant he tastes mortality.
Dreams unrealized
Fear, emotion, impotence…

He remembers a dream,
Not of this world yet real.

Broken thoughts
Impossible concentration.

A child is so fragile.
Swirl of emotion
Clear, yet out of reach.

I awoke to fear one day!
Not from self…of self
Yet
Real
Painful.

A presence looms over the child.
"is this real?"
"I don't know".
"Am I safe?"
"Illusion".

Memories, the echoes of his mind crowd him now.

I think
See
Feel
Am.

Is that all?
Is too much ever enough?

Impossible concentration…
Connection
Sudden.

Striken by emotion he rests
All becomes clear, yet…

Too much.

It grows within
Wanders without
Enfolding in mystery.

The end.
Is that all?
Whispers now……………..

yesss…. Read more!