Re: Bitkeeper outrage, old and new

[Rob Landley <landley@trommello.org>]

On Sunday 20 October 2002 17:53, Rik van Riel wrote:
> On 21 Oct 2002, Xavier Bestel wrote:
> > Le dim 20/10/2002 à 23:51, Robert Love a écrit :
> > > The assignment says (I quote) "I hereby transfer... my entire right,
> > > title, and interest (including all rights under copyright)... in my
> > > program".
> >
> > Last time I looked, it wasn't possible to relinquish copyright on your
> > own work, no matter what you sign. Maybe it's not like that in all
> > countries, after all.
>
> Germany (and France, judging from your words) have laws that
> guarantee that the creator of a work keeps copyright on the
> work.  At least, part of the copyright cannot be signed over
> to other people or organisations.
>
> I wonder if this means the FSF can't accept contributions
> from these countries, or if they've found some weasel-words
> around the legislation of those countries...
>
> Rik

1) The reason the FSF wanted people to sign over their copyrights was so 
they'd have unassailable standing in court to defend them if sued.  (The 
copyrightholder is the one who gets to sue to enforce the copyright.)

2) It's possible to have joint copyrights, or more than one copyright on a 
work.  Think a song written by one person, sung by another, with backup 
vocals and session musicians, each of whom has a copyright on their 
performance.  (This is why movies get everybody to sign a release up front, 
and why theatrical performances of things like "cats" where they don't do 
this up-front are basically never videotaped and shown on television, no 
matter successful they wind up being.)

3) The creator of a work doesn't always get the copyright, at least in the US.  
There's something called "work for hire", which means if somebody else 
commisioned the work (paid you to do it, and asked you to do it, and you were 
acting as their employee, etc), they get the copyright rather than you.  
(Usually your contract has some variant of copyright assignment anyway just 
to be safe.)

4) A work can be dual licensed.  A license is a grant of permission from the 
copyright holder delegating the rights reserved by the copyright, such as the 
ability to make copies.  The person the law reserves those rights to can 
grant permission multiple times, to different people or overlapping groups of 
people, under different terms, etc...

Hit google and look for "copyright law faq", the first few hits are good.  
Some are little out of date (the faqs.org one is from january 94, predating 
the DMCA and such, but still a great primer on the basics).

Rob