Re: Lintian over sensitivity?

[Ben Finney <bignose+hates-spam@benfinney.id.au>]

Bas Wijnen <wijnen@debian.org> writes:

> Also, lintian wants a statement of the form "Copyright <year> <author>".
> While saying "it is copyrighted <year> <author>" seems to have the same
> meaning to me, I'm not sure how lawyers think about this.  Again, better
> be safe and use the standard format.

Despite common misunderstandings about copyright law, "to copyright"
is not a verb. Copyright is a *noun*, so to say that a work "is
copyrighted" is, at best, poor grammar.

Worse, the statement "author foo copyrights work bar" is legal
nonsense. Copyright is not enacted by the author, it's enacted by
their government — specifically, the government's copyright laws.

The form "Copyright © <year> <person>" is stating who holds the
copyright, with "hold" being the verb. The holder of the copyright is
*granted* the copyright by the government of their jurisdiction.

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Ben Finney