Björn Kettunen wrote: > Copyright assignment doesn't even work in most European > countries. I.e. if you're in Germany you can't sign your copyright away. > Which is why the FSFE suggests to use Fiduciary Licence Agreements. > Anyway that's OT but I just realize again how out of touch the FSF is in > the global sense.
I know very little about German law, but if it is in any way similar to Spanish law, there are two different concepts that are often confused: authorship and copyright. You cannot renounce the first (i.e., say you wrote something you didn't, and vice versa), but of course you can assign copyright of your work to somebody else. That's how most artists make money, by allowing other people (usually a publisher) to make copies of their work in exchange for a cut of the sales. And just like bigger artists get bigger cuts or become publishers themselves, the conditions of that assignment can vary depending on the agreement reached. There should be nothing prohibiting anyone from letting the FSF make copies of their work as long as the FSF doesn't claim to be the author. That said, maybe German law states that one cannot assign copyright to someone in perpetuity or for free, but I doubt it. I think what Germans mean when they say putting their work in the public domain is illegal is just that they cannot renounce authorship of their work (which is something entirely different). After all, everyone's work will enter the public domain eventually. But maybe I'm wrong. Again, I know very little about German law. -- José Manuel García-Patos Madrid
