Hi,
Stefan Finzel wrote:
As a german citizen I'll try you explain my understanding of my
countries law. The basic concept should be similar within central Europe
(Austria, France, Italy, Spain ... but not Great Britain) as most
countries laws evolved from the Roman law .
hmm... but in the case of copyright, Germany is a signatory of the Berne
convention (right?), and so shouldnt the basic aspects of copyright remain the same?
First one just handles the mental ownership of a piece of work. This
can not be given to another party. In many cases this is worth nothing
as is just bundles your name with your work.
This does differ from copyright somewhat, but apparently it is also covered in
the Berne convention.
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/moral%20rights
Second one handles the commercial and economical aspects. Of cause this
is something total different. If you get paid for your work, you
sometimes loose this rights to your customer or employer immediatly.
If you still have this rights by your own you are able to
give/license/sell them like every material thing.
Would this not correspond to copyright?
The right to sell is (usually) covered by copyright.
As I unterstand the american way the customer or employer get the
unrestricted usage rights under almost all circumstances. Additionally
the author seems to have no right to be mentioned at all.
I'm not from the U.S., so my understanding may be skewed, but it seems that it
depends on the license and/or contract.
Do not worry in casse an author tells you he gives you the right to use,
to decide how to use AND(!!!) the right to modify it.
The thing is, the right to use is covered by patent law (which doesnt yet and
hopefully never applies to software in Europe, methinks), while the right to
modify is covered by copyright law. Both are not moral rights, from what I see.
Once again note, in Germany the right to modify code does not include
removing the authors name.
That's because the right of attribution is a moral right.
Now most germans seems to accept the common GPL and BSD like copyrights.
But I have problems understanding many restrictions/variatons of
proprietary copyrights and just do not accept and use them.
In cases german citizens accepted a foreign license model ot contribute
software, it would be nearly impossible to involve a German court
whether for license nor for warranty aspects.
Yeah, there was a discussion on the differences in law in some European
countries and the U.S. and similiar systems at the Open Source Initiative
license discuss mailing list, but I wasnt paying attention :|
Eugene Wee
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice/opinion.
