In addition to that, in most European countries, there's not only the Copyright law, but this droit d'auteur thing.
I'd be interested to learn how does this changes copyright licensing in practise?
Also, rumours have it (seen at Heise Newsticker "Bremer Lizenz", for the Germans among the readership) that, if you disclaim everything, you end up being in "default liability by law", which is a lot more than the bare minimum;
Rumours also have it that the practise of liability limitations in software licensing has been accepted in European courts for long time ago. Anyone can check the differences in European and US licensing terms of any global software company's products. They are not that different.
>Till Jaeger from ifrOSS spoke that one cannot disclaim liability for malware (eg, viruses or trojans put into the code) or work which is others' intellectual property.
(As far as I am informed, you're liable for these two if you put it in voluntarily, and - if you didn't know about it - if you remove it as soon as you get aware of it, you won't usually be held liable. Please correct me if I'm wrong; IANAL.)
I think you are part right here: you cannot release yourself from liability towards the one who actually owns the intellectual property. However, you can release yourself from liability towards the ones you license your software to (or with whom you enter into a contractual agreement).
In general, you are also right in that liability limitations don't apply when one acts in bad faith (or with "malicuous thoughts").
* Licensor hereby provides this work "as is" and without any warran- * ties whatsoever, express or implied, to the maximum extent permit- * ted by applicable law, except that the work is not written or pub- * lished with malice intent;
I don't fully see how "to the maximum extent permitted by law" wouldn't cover the situations you are worried about?
Regards, Mikko
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