New candidates for inclusion in Extras : udftools and starfighter-music

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Wed, 2005-02-09 at 22:41 +0100, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> On Wed, 9 Feb 2005 21:31:50 +0100, Matthias Saou wrote:
> 
> > Matthias Saou wrote :
> > 
> > > - starfighter-music
> > [...]
> > 
> > Yikes.
> > 
> > "Much ado about nothing" :-)
> > 
> > I started wondering, so I asked... and I was right :
> > 
> > "Aye... The music is already in the pak file. The music is just there as a 
> > seperate download because a lot of people requested access to the music
> > files 
> > since they wanted to listen to them seperately ;)"
> > 
> > Sooo... basically the separate package it totally irrelevant (that's what I
> > get for never playing the game with sound on!), but things did get cleared
> > up regarding the license of the included music files. Should this be
> > reflected in the "License:" tag of the package? Or does "public domain"
> > mean that these files can be reused in any proprietary or free software,
> > thus relicensed just about any way one wants?
> 
> That's a question for lawyers, whether somebody also waives all his rights
> in the composition (melody, accompany and such details) when he releases
> music into the public domain. It is my understanding that work released
> into the public domain is not even copyrighted.
No. This is a matter of applicable law, in particular national laws.
What you say, to my knowledge probably is true in the US, but it
definitely is not true in certain countries, e.g. Germany.

In Germany, you can not give up any copyright nor assign any copyright
to anybody on any "creative work" (this applies to musical compositions,
recordings/performance/arrangements of music as well as to SW).

I.e. even if you did not explicitly put a "Copyright (c)" notice on such
a piece of work it will be copyrighted by you. In Germany, all you only
can do is to give away "licenses to the public", and "express your will
not to enforce unauthorized copying/modifications", but you can not give
up any copyright.

Ralf