On Thursday 18 September 2008 09:20:22 Roberto Gordo Saez wrote: > 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; Hence my call: http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2007/04/some-thoughts-on-copyright-offensive.html that the laws be changed so that: 1. All 'non'marked' works get an automatic copyleft, not an automatic copyright. > 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). all the best, drew _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-user
