Re: question about moral rights
Hi Mark,
On Thursday 24 April 2003 19:37, Mark Rafn wrote:
> A few people have brought up the topic of Moral Rights, with
> which I am not very familiar. They sound like some sort of
> meta-copyright which an author cannot assign, and may not be
> able to grant permission over.
>
> Does anyone have a pointer to some description of these rights
> that a layman like myself might understand? I'm particularly
> interested in how they relate to the GFDL and why they would
> apply to documentation and not to software.
* * * IANAL * * *
The German Authors Rights Law is available at
http://bundesrecht.juris.de/bundesrecht/urhg/index.html
For an English version, use the Google translation tools:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbundesrecht.juris.de%2Fbundesrecht%2Furhg%2Findex.html&langpair=de%7Cen&hl=de&ie=ISO-8859-1&prev=%2Flanguage_tools
(Although this translation seems to be quite readable, I'm a bit
confused about the translation of the headline, "Copyright law
and used patent rights". Literally, it should translate to "Law
About Authors Rights and Similar Protection Rights". What the
hell are "used patents rights"???)
Relevant passages might be:
| UrhG § 14 distortion of the work
|
| The author has the right to forbid distortion or another
| impairment of its work which is suitable, to endanger its
| entitled mental or personal interests in the work.
and
| UrhG § 42 recall right because of changed conviction
|
| (1) the author can recall a right to use opposite the owner,
| if the work does not correspond to its conviction any longer
| and cannot to it therefore the utilization of the work any
| longer be zugemutet. The legal successor of the author (§ 30)
| can explain the recall only if he prove that the author before
| its death would have been entitled to the recall and from the
| explanation of the recall was prevented or this ordered
| last-willingly.
|
| (2) without the recall right cannot be done in advance. Its
| practice cannot be excluded.
|
| (3) the author has to compensate the owner of the right to use
| appropriately.
This point is interesting. How can anyone ever compensate six
billion licensees approprietely? ;o)
| The remuneration must at least cover the
| expenditures, which the owner of the right to use up to the
| explanation of the recall made; however here expenditures,
| which are allotted to uses already pulled, remain out of
| consideration. The recall becomes only effective if the author
| replaced the expenditures or carried security out for it. The
| owner of the right to use has to communicate within one period
| from three months to explanation of the recall the
| expenditures to the author; if it does not follow this
| obligation, then the recall becomes already effective at the
| end of this term.
|
| (4) if the author wants to again use the work after recall,
| then he is obligated to offer to the former owner of the right
| to use an appropriate right to use for appropriate conditions.
|
| (5) the regulations in § 41 exp. 5 and 7 are to be used
| accordingly.
- - - - -
I can't find any hint why software should be different.
cu,
Thomas
}:o{#
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