William wrote:
So far as I've seen, copyrights are applied to each individual file,
not 'packages'. I don't know why.
NOTE: What follows is pure copyright law without any reference to the
zlib licence. It is necessary to explain the normal situation first.
Copyright
=========
Copyright is a type of property right which is founded on a person's
creative skill and labour. It is designed to prevent the unauthorised
use by others of a work, that is, the original form in which an idea or
information has been expressed by the creator. Copyright is made up of a
bundle of exclusive economic rights to do certain acts with an original
work or other copyright subject-matter.
In addition to the above so-called economic rights, there are also moral
rights. Moral rights include the right to attribution (the right of an
author of a work to be acknowledged as such) and the right of integrity
(the right to object to the derogatory treatment of the work). Moral
rights cannot be sold, traded or devised by will. An author can consent
to a _specified_ act or omission which would otherwise infringe a moral
right. Employed authors can consent to _all_ or _any_ acts or omissions
in relation to works they created in the course of their employment.
Compilation copyright
=====================
The maker of a package or collection holds what is called the
"compilation copyright" but that does not affect the copyright in the
individual files. The maker of the package or collection does not hold
any copyright in the individual files merely because of the creation of
the package or collection of files.
Compilation copyrights are often weak and overturned in the Courts
because generally very little skill is involved in the creation of them.
For a strong compilation copyright claim you need significant creativity
or intellectual effort. Mere labour or "sweat of the brow" is not
sufficient.
The classic case in Australia was the copyright claimed by the once
Government monopoly Telco in the "white pages" and "yellow pages"
telephone directories. After several Court cases over a decade it was
ultimately declared that while a lot of labour had been involved in the
compilation of the directories, there was no or insufficient creativity
or intellectual effort involved. So, no copyright.
Derivative works
================
If a refactoring of a copyrighted original source file incorporates a
substantial part of the original, it qualifies as a reproduction which
requires permission of the original copyright owner as does any further
copying of that reproduction file.
If in the process of the refactoring of a copyrighted source code file,
the person doing the refactoring adds substantial new code, then the the
refactoring author generally owns the copyright in that new code.
A derivative work may include a substantial part of the original code as
well as substantial new code. This gives rise to two possible situations:
1) where the additional code cannot be meaningfully separated from the
original code, joint ownership arises. The original author retains
complete ownership of the copyright in the original code version. The
refactoring author cannot separately exploit his copyright, but he has
the right to withhold permission for the use of the derivative work.
2) where the additional code may be meaningfully separated from the
original code and so constitutes a separate work, the refactoring author
owns the copyright in that work. Each party therefore owns a separate
copyright in their separate portions of the derivative work.
Licences
========
The rules above can be varied by agreement (licence). Where a licence is
involved, the author uses the licence to grant others certain rights
that may or may not be subject to conditions or restrictions imposed by
the author (as in the zlib licence).
Common licensing mistakes
=========================
1) failure to correctly identify the legal owner of the copyright in the
original work;
2) assuming that the generation of an extra copyright in a derivative
work extinguishes prior rights - it doesn't;
3) a tendency to favour joint ownership without realising that each
joint owner requires the permission of the other to use and/or
commercialise the work.
Finally
=======
It is against this background, that the zlib licence operates.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"jallib" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/jallib?hl=en.
