Re: ITS: arc-colors, gnome-colors, shiki-colors are ready

["Bernhard R. Link" <brlink@debian.org>]

* Dmitrijs Ledkovs <dmitrij.ledkov@gmail.com> [090605 20:01]:
> 2009/6/5 Bernhard R. Link <brlink@debian.org>:
> > * Dmitrijs Ledkovs <dmitrij.ledkov@gmail.com> [090605 14:01]:
> >> > I've asked multiple times and not yet got a single argument why
> >> > "I herby place this and that in the public domain" could see any danger
> >> > to be misunderstood or invalidated by a German court.
> >
> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain#Rule_of_the_shorter_term
> >>
> >> Sorry no better source.
> >
> > Only thing I can find there is that the "years after authors death"
> > is the same without looking where the author lived. And it also says
> > that the USA has the same behaviour in this regard.
> >
> > I doubt we will find useable software anytime soon where the
> > software is in the public domain because the author is many decades
> > dead, but I was speaking about people giving up their copyrights.
> >
> > Hochachtungsvoll,
> >        Bernhard R. Link
> 
> "However, some countries make exceptions to this rule. A notorious
> case is Germany, which has had a bilateral treaty with the U.S.
> governing copyright since January 15, 1892. That treaty, which is
> still in effect, defined that a U.S. work was copyrighted in Germany
> according to German law irrespective of the work's copyright status in
> the U.S, and it did not contain a "rule of the shorter term". In one
> case, a German court therefore decided that a U.S. work that had
> fallen into the public domain in the U.S. was still copyrighted in
> Germany in 2003 in spite of §7(1) of the EU directive."
> 
> Good enough for me.

To say what? All this says, especially with the context you omitted,
that a work will not enter public domain N years after death of the
author for N the value from the authors home country but only when the
number of years by German law are reached.

And given the list also linked on that page, that is true for many
countries, including the US. If I misread anything, please tell me.
But there is nothing at all saying that a "I place this work in the
public domain" would have any more problems in Germany than in the US.

Hochachtungsvoll,
	Bernhard R. Link