On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 07:39:18AM -0400, drew Roberts wrote: > > That paragraph is over-simplified, there are many other things to take > > into account. First one and most important is that the author is not > > bounded by the GPL terms, so the requirement to place notices in the > > files when they are changed can only be really enforced for > > contributors. > > Well..... but does the author remain THE author once there are other > contributions in that file? Ouch... it was not my intention to turn this into a legal thread :-/ I hate copyright (and laws in general), and the details are complex and horrid (at least under my point of view), but sadly they are part of our world. If you are curious, you can find many details here: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html groklaw.net is a very recoomended source for all interested in legal matters, specially oriented at free software. And Lawrence Lessig books are all great. I'll try to give an answer to your question (though it may not be completely accurate, and there are differences between countries): since Berne Convention in 1989, everything is copyrighted by default, and an explicit copyright notice is not required anymore. It is also not required to register a work in an official registration office. If the author does not attach his own copyright notice, nor publish the work with his name, nor officially register his work in a copyright office, he will be still the copyright holder, though it could be difficult (or maybe impossible) for him to prove that fact. Note the difference between being the copyright holder and proving it. In complex cases, a judge decission would be needed. The author has "magical powers" for each work it creates, and nobody else has permission for those works, unless those permissions are granted by him. The GPL and other free licenses are a way to use copyright law to grant those permissions to the public, by using the copyright in inverse form (hence the copyleft term). For this reason it is very important to attach clear notices to free software (or free artwork), because by default, nothing is permitted. I've had a long and heated discussion time ago in debian-legal because many free programs do not include copyright notices for artwork, or they use artwork copied from unknown places. Sadly, with today laws, most likely anything you find in the Internet is copyrighted, even if a copyright notice is not attached. People working on free software usually don't copy source code from unkown authors; when copying code from other free program, the author is properly credited and it is OK. It should be the same for artwork, it is a risk (specially for distributions) and never a good idea to use something when the source and license is not clear. I've also noticed that many people place his samples (or photos, or other kind of works) in the Internet for free, with the intent to share them for everybody use. Many times those persons do not attach a copyright notice because they don't want to restrict the usage, but it is a shame, because the usage is restricted by default; if the intention is to make them free, it would be far better to place those works under a CC-BY or other permissive license (in the US it is also possible to donate a work into the public domain, but this is not always true in other countries). _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-user
