Interesting perspective from Mary Wong of Franklin Pierce Law Center discussing the growing discourse around such topics as “the commons,” “free culture,” and “open content.”

Essentially shes drawing a resonance between Human Rights "Law" and "Copy Rights" The reason is to advocate User rights that balance the growing extent and duration of proprietary rights producers are being granted, for the benefit of "The Author."

Please forgive all the caps and quotes, but there are a lot of questions about "The Author," particularly in a world where nothing is truly original.

The producer's right, particularly the French concept of Auteur (?) rights, has always been sheeted home to inviolable human right of possession of work, however for cultural products, there has been a failure to include the audience in the deal and while the audience was critical it was excluded. Back in the day when the audience had no capability for commentary and critique it wasn't a big right to cede, but that day has gone. The audience is going to participate, and "The Author" had better get used to it, and Governments need to start working on frameworks that support both the performer and the audience.

In granting a human right, one must assure all humans benefit from it. In granting exclusive rights, this is clearly problematic.