Re: [Bug-cssc] Fwd: GNU CSSC 1.3.1 is released

[Joerg Schilling]

James Youngman <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 4:29 PM, Joerg Schilling
> <address@hidden> wrote:
> > I am sorry, but I cannot do something that is forbidden by law. "copyright
> > assignment" is forbidden by law in Europe.
>
> You're mistaken.  This is not the case.
>
> Copyrights are in fact a collection of rights which differ somewhat in
> various jurisdictions (for example in some countries there is no moral
> right for computer software).   However, it is reasonable to discuss
> this in the context of the Berne convention (since only around 20
> countries are not signatories).   Somewhat loosely the rights can be
> termed economic rights or moral rights (see the text of the Berne
> convention, specificially this section:
> http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html#P123_20726).
>  Economic rights can be transferred, but moral rights cannot.
> However, it is not illegal to transfer a moral right, it is merely
> ineffective.   Agreements to transfer moral rights simply have no
> effect.   Transfer of copyright rights is not forbidden.

The general problem is that looking at the issues with the background of an 
english mothertonge may give a different result than not doing so:

        The official translation for "Copyright" is "Urheberrecht"

But:

        Urheberrecht =  Nutzungsrechte + Autorenrechte
                        (Copy rights + Authorship rights)

        Copyright =     Copy rights

so
        Urheberrecht != Copyright

and from what I have been told by lawyers...: you cannt be sure that a US judge
will regard the Berne convention or the German Urheberrecht even though he would
need to.

Fortunately this is about OpenSource and if the OpenSource Definition 
(from http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php) applies to some code, 
there is no need to have a "copyright assignment" unless you in the future also 
plan to publish the code as closed source or unless you like to do something 
that the author would not agree with.

Finally let me ask you: would you give me a "copyright assignment" for your 
code?

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:address@hidden (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       address@hidden                (uni)  
       address@hidden (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily