news: 487daf45@news.povray.org...
>And, by the way, I do not consider the wish of the original author as
>something sacred. The society chose to grant the authors exclusive rights 
>on
>their work because it is supposed to help them to earn a living from it,
>thus allowing to produce more work for the greater good of the whole human
>species. But there is no fundamental right to restrict the diffusion of a
>work, just a compromise between unrestricted distribution and author
>remuneration.

This is the traditional US point of view but other cultures have a different 
one, where the author is actually "sacred" : it's called "moral rights" and 
it's part of the Berne Convention (Article 6b).

"Independent of the author's economic rights, and even after the transfer of 
the said rights, the author shall have the right to claim authorship of the 
work and to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of, 
or other derogatory action in relation to the said work, which would be 
prejudicial to the author's honor or reputation."

The US signed it, but moral rights are still not a US tradition (the US only 
recognises moral rights for visual arts) while they are truly in force and 
considered normal in other countries. For instance, that's the reason why I 
don't put anything in the POV-Ray object collection: the chosen licence 
(LGPL) does not recognise any moral rights at all.

G.

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