World Book and Copyright Day

St George’s Day – April 23^rd is the designated day chosen by UNESCO back in 1995.        

Informative talk given at Moray House that essentially pointed out recognisation  of  the person who dreams up any new idea is the basis and first step of an idea of copyright.  This may actually be more difficult than you think as I remember an African-American writer claiming to have written down the key ideas that the Coen Brothers turned into the hit Matrix Trilogy – if you are a little nobody how do you register your idea/s? The USA is the only country to address this issue with a Patent system– useful as it helps to avoid duplication as one can check to see if someone else has registered your bright idea before you dreamt it up.
Maybe with the advent of the Internet we can develop a Wiki-Ideas site so to tap into the ideas from all over the World and acknowledge originality and no pesky Asian can 'steal' and sell a prototype based on your idea - ha- aren't you sorry now World that the manufacturing base has moved East?!

 So the question came up at Question-time about the ‘rights’ of traditional songs and home remedies and Mr Housty said that presented a problem as there was not one person who could be associated with them—in any case the basic copyright premise lasts the Lifetime of the person plus a further 50yrs from their death after which it enters the Pool of Knowledge to benefit all of Mankind.  Wonder how many years Eddie Grant has on ‘Yellow Bird’ and other ‘copyrights’ he bought up?

Guyana’s Legislation on this Topic is the 1956 Law left over from Colonial times!  This may present a further problem for the traditional songs, etc as Guyana wasn’t a recognized entity at the time.  Probably the best thing you can do if you have produced an original piece of work would be to stick a common “c” in a circle next to your name with a month and year and hope for the best.


20th July 2012 - but in the real world --- this is what can happen to you-- in fact, I unknowingly took some pics off the Internet -- now going through the blog to remove, read and weep:
http://www.roniloren.com/blog/2012/7/20/bloggers-beware-you-can-get-sued-for-using-pics-on-your-blog.html