Re: [LAU] Yamaha Disklavier Pro grand piano

From: drew Roberts <zotz@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Thu Sep 18 2008 - 16:43:31 EEST

On Thursday 18 September 2008 09:20:22 Roberto Gordo Saez wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 07:39:18AM -0400, drew Roberts wrote:
> > > That paragraph is over-simplified, there are many other things to take
> > > into account. First one and most important is that the author is not
> > > bounded by the GPL terms, so the requirement to place notices in the
> > > files when they are changed can only be really enforced for
> > > contributors.
> >
> > Well..... but does the author remain THE author once there are other
> > contributions in that file?
>
> Ouch... it was not my intention to turn this into a legal thread :-/
> I hate copyright (and laws in general), and the details are complex and
> horrid (at least under my point of view), but sadly they are part of
> our world. If you are curious, you can find many details here:
>
> http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html
>
> groklaw.net is a very recoomended source for all interested in legal
> matters, specially oriented at free software. And Lawrence Lessig books
> are all great.
>
> I'll try to give an answer to your question (though it may not be
> completely accurate, and there are differences between countries):
> since Berne Convention in 1989, everything is copyrighted by default, and
> an explicit copyright notice is not required anymore. It is also not
> required to register a work in an official registration office. If the
> author does not attach his own copyright notice, nor publish the work
> with his name, nor officially register his work in a copyright office,
> he will be still the copyright holder, though it could be difficult (or
> maybe impossible) for him to prove that fact. Note the difference
> between being the copyright holder and proving it. In complex cases,
> a judge decission would be needed.
>
> The author has "magical powers" for each work it creates, and nobody
> else has permission for those works, unless those permissions are
> granted by him. The GPL and other free licenses are a way to use
> copyright law to grant those permissions to the public, by using the
> copyright in inverse form (hence the copyleft term). For this reason
> it is very important to attach clear notices to free software (or free
> artwork), because by default, nothing is permitted.
>
> I've had a long and heated discussion time ago in debian-legal because
> many free programs do not include copyright notices for artwork, or
> they use artwork copied from unknown places. Sadly, with today laws,
> most likely anything you find in the Internet is copyrighted, even if
> a copyright notice is not attached. People working on free software
> usually don't copy source code from unkown authors; when copying
> code from other free program, the author is properly credited and it
> is OK. It should be the same for artwork, it is a risk (specially for
> distributions) and never a good idea to use something when the source
> and license is not clear.
>
> I've also noticed that many people place his samples (or photos, or
> other kind of works) in the Internet for free, with the intent to share
> them for everybody use. Many times those persons do not attach a
> copyright notice because they don't want to restrict the usage, but it
> is a shame, because the usage is restricted by default;

Hence my call:

http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2007/04/some-thoughts-on-copyright-offensive.html

that the laws be changed so that:

1. All 'non'marked' works get an automatic copyleft, not an automatic
copyright.

> if the intention
> is to make them free, it would be far better to place those works under
> a CC-BY or other permissive license (in the US it is also possible to
> donate a work into the public domain, but this is not always true in
> other countries).

all the best,

drew
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user@email-addr-hidden
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-user
Received on Thu Sep 18 20:15:02 2008

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Thu Sep 18 2008 - 20:15:02 EEST