On Mon, Sep 23, 2002 at 01:02:13PM +0200, Lourens Veen wrote: > On Monday 23 September 2002 12:03, Joerg Schilling wrote: > > Preface: I am sorry, but it seems that you don't know much about > > Copyright issues :-( Many of your statements are completely > > wrong and none of your mails from the last night has been > > helpful. > > > > For a decent discussion on this topic it is important that we use > > correct verbalizations. Unfortunately, the English language is > > not very precise here.... > > [...explanation of _German_ copyright system...] > > I believe we need to make a clear distinction between the German > copyright laws and the American copyright laws. Unfortunately, > there seem to be some major differences here, and given what you > wrote I'm not even sure if the GPL makes sense at all in the > context of German (and probably other European) copyright law.
First: IANAL, AFAIK & AFAIR! The "biggest" difference is that in the US you can "give up" (e.g. sell) your authorship-rights (to use Joergs nomenclature) while in germany this is impossibel. Regarding GPL/PD/BSD/... this means that you (if you are german) "tolerate" violations of your rights. (You have the rights, but you don't use/enforce them.) e.g. It would be easy for a german to forbid another german to use his GPD/PD/BSD/... software. In the US this not be possibel, because you give up this/that right(s). In germany you can't give up that right, you just don't use it. AFAIR there has only been one case where a german has "missused" his german right(s) forbid another german to use his software. Unfortunatly i can't remember any details. Bis denn -- Real Programmers consider "what you see is what you get" to be just as bad a concept in Text Editors as it is in women. No, the Real Programmer wants a "you asked for it, you got it" text editor -- complicated, cryptic, powerful, unforgiving, dangerous. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
