Re: Choosing a License: GNU APL? AFL 3.0?
On Jan 2, 2008 3:05 PM, Arnoud Engelfriet <arnoud@engelfriet.net> wrote:
> Art. 6bis of Berne provides the right of the author to claim
> authorship of the work. It seems reasonable to consider a copyright
> notice as a claim of authorship (in the normal case, where
> author == copyright holder). This "claim" includes the right to
> be mentioned as the author. If the author has exercised this
> right, removing the notice from the work violates this right.
A couple of thoughts on this:
a. I don't think a copyright notice can be taken as an assertion of
authorship, precisely because the copyright may be owned by someone
other than the author. Hence most books that are published in the UK
include both a copyright notice (usually naming the publisher as
owner) and a statement that the author has asserted their moral
rights.
b. Even if a copyright notice could be read as an assertion of the
author's moral rights to be identified as the author, I don't think
this would make the text of the notice itself inviolable - provided
that the author was still acknowledged elsewhere.
> Under US law, art. 6bis Berne does not apply (even though it should)
> to authors of computer programs.
Ditto English law. I think that betrays an assumption on the part of
US and UK lawmakers that computer programmers are merely technicians,
not creative artists.
John
(TINLA)
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