>>>>> "Wolfgang" == Wolfgang Jeltsch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Wolfgang> But authorship is not the same as copyright. So the
Wolfgang> German Urheberrecht doesn't automatically forbid
Wolfgang> something like transferal of copyright if it forbids
Wolfgang> transferal of authorship, right?
As I understand it, transferral of "authorship" isn't possible
anywhere. Authorship is an historical fact. What the Urheberrecht
and the droit d'auteur do is prevent one from transferring certain
rights in a work, and thus restrict how much of the copyright can
actually be transferred.
For example, some of these provisions guarantee the author the right
to prohibit use of his work or derivatives to defame the author
himself, and things like that, which are related to the author's
personal relationship to his work rather than the economic use of the
work. Anglo-American law doesn't make such a distinction; once you
sell it, you have no special control over how it's used. (Of course,
if the use is libelous, you can sue under libel law; but anybody can
do that.)
So this is the problem: how to come up with wording that transfers
everything that can be transferred in each jurisdiction, without
attempting to transfer something that is illegal to transfer, and
possibly voiding the whole contract.
You'd have to ask a lawyer for a better explanation, but that's what
I've heard and it's enough to convince me that under current laws it's
a real problem, even if I don't fully understand it.
--
School of Systems and Information Engineering http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
ask what your business can "do for" free software.
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