On Mon Jun 07, 2004 at 10:33:49 +0930, Glen Turner wrote: >On Mon, 2004-06-07 at 10:15, Benno wrote: > >> I was under the impression that in Australian copyright law there could only >> be one copyright owner. (That could be either a person or a comany). > >There can be joint ownership. This often happens in bands (ie, all >members agree to be copyright holders, whomever actually authored the >lyrics, music and arrangement). That way non-author band members aren't >ripped off. > >More common with computer programs is the "rights assignment". You still >own the copyright, but you non-exclusively assign all rights to another >party. The FSF rights assignment is a good example.
I was under the impression that rights assignment, especially the FSF one is a transfer of copyright. I.e: FSF now owns copyright, and you no longer own copyright. >There is no requirement in Australian copyright law that the copyright >holder be a full legal entity -- a child or an unincorporated joint >venture can hold copyright. (Conversely, gov't depts don't hold >copyright, the state does). According to the G10 fact sheet you do. Which is why you can't put business name in the copyright header. (Although company is fine.) And a child is a full legal entity, at least in terms of being able to legally own goods. >> They also have really good fact sheets. One of the ones I read implied >> that joint copyright was not valid in anyway. > >Hmmm. Got a reference, I looked at the most obvious one, "G58 Ownership >of Copyright", and with some minor quibbles it seems to be right. G10 an introduction to the copyright system, but yes reading G58 it does explicitly state there is such a thing as joint ownership, so I stand corrected ;) Benno -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
