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

[Nicolas Mailhot]

On Jeu 10 février 2005 6:00, Ralf Corsepius a écrit :
> On Wed, 2005-02-09 at 22:41 +0100, Michael Schwendt wrote:
>> On Wed, 9 Feb 2005 21:31:50 +0100, Matthias Saou wrote:
>>
>> 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).

Same in France and probably most Europe.

You must understand most European people do not believe in the
transcendental nature of the "free" market (Europe signed the Kyoto
protocol - the USA pushed for creation of a pollution quota market, I
guess someday you'll be able do do anything in America provided you put
enough money on the table). On the contrary they think there are some
higher rules (moral, social...) that take precedance over making
everything a product.

So in Europe (GB excepted probably) you can sell what amounts to copyright
assignation in all practical matters except the original author retains
unalienable "moral" rights on his creations. What this means practicaly is
a pacifist can contest in court the use of one of his creations by the
army (in a recruitement ad...), you can not limit the diffusion of a
creation (song, book...) you don't like just by buying all publication
rights and refusing to exercise them, etc

You could say someone who wanted his book to be published should not have
sold the copyright to an ennemy, but modern financial structures are so
complex you got strange ownership situations all the time, and Europeans
decided some safeguards were needed.

Of course you have to convince the judge the current use of your creation
is totally contrary to your beliefs and this is not a ploy to pull out of
an ill-advised contract, plus it sends a real bad message to people that
could buy some use rights on your other creations, so it's almost never
exercised.

I could easily imagine a european hacker arguing SCO should not be allowed
to use the code he released for BSD because SCO decided to attack the
ATT/BSD settlement. But IANAL - this is how I understand the spirit of the
law, practical application is something else.

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot