Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña wrote:
On Mon, Jun 05, 2006 at 02:48:30PM +0200, Michael Bramer wrote:In Germany you can't lost your Copyright. Like the right for free speach. But you can allow other to use your rights: use the programm, change it etc.
Are you sure about that? In Spanish copyright law you cannot lose the "authorship" right of something [1] but you can waive other righs to third parties (including "copying" rights, "translation" rights, "distribution" rights, etc.) I though that Copyright law was similar across all EU countries..
Yes, because most European countries signed the Berne convention on copyright http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literary_and_Artistic_Works. Later on the European Union released http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU_Copyright_directive with additional harmonization, and other non-European countries - including US - also adapted their laws to be very similar.
[1] I.e. the right that makes something need to be attributed to you.
It's a right of the author to decide, if and how the work has a 'named authorship'. Copyright allows to publish anonymous or pseudonymous. But it is not allowed to fake the authorship, i.e. write my own name on a picture of e.g. Picasso, or write the name Picasso on one of the pictures painted by myself.
Helmut Wollmersdorfer