From: tb@MIT.EDU (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) To: "Chloe Hoffman" <chloehoffman@hotmail.com> CC: debian-legal@lists.debian.org Subject: Re: complete clone of the debian website Date: 07 Jun 2000 20:46:33 -0400 "Chloe Hoffman" <chloehoffman@hotmail.com> writes:> "All rights reserved" is not necessary. This is just a legacy from the past> which I believe is no longer required - you had to use that language in > order to get certain protections in some Latin America countries but no> longer. All rights are reserved automatically in the absence of a license> (whether express or implied). "All Rights Reserved" was a magic phrase necessary for copyright protection under the Pan-American Copyright Treaty. It is my understanding that there are still signatories to this treaty which have not agreed to the Berne Convention, so it's still a good idea to continue to say "All Rights Reserved" to be sure to have protection in such countries. Thomas
It certainly doesn't hurt to use "All Rights Reserved." After all it could help to negate an implied license. I haven't researched the status of Buenos Aires or whether all countries are now members of Berne but this is what Terry Carroll says in his excellent FAQ:
3.10) What does "All Rights Reserved" mean? One of the earliest international copyright treaties to which the U.S.was a member was the 1911 Buenos Aires Convention on Literary and Artistic Copyrights (see section 4.1 for more information). This treaty provided that, once copyright was obtained for a work in one signatory country, all other signatories accorded protection as well without requiring any further formalities (i.e., notice or registration), provided that the work contained a notice reserving these rights. The typical notice complying with Buenos Aires was "All Rights Reserved."
As noted in section 4.1, the Buenos Aires Convention is essentially dead today, and the "All Rights Reserved" notice no longer serves much useful purpose. It lives on mostly as a testament to inertia on the part of U.S. publishers.
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