RPL 1.5 discussion

Walter van Holst w.van.holst at mitopics.nl
Sun Sep 23 11:12:00 UTC 2007



> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> Van: Lawrence Rosen [mailto:lrosen at rosenlaw.com]
> The issue about whether executable copies must display
> notices is different from this. I doubt seriously that any
> jurisdiction in the world requires a visible attribution
> notice identifying the licensor on the screens of users of
> executable software in order to afford copyright protection
> to the software code itself or to enforce the open source
> license for that software.

There are a few jurisdictions outside the Berne Convention that might require such an attribution (the grey countries on this map http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Berne_Convention.png) but those are hardly relevant in the grander scheme of things. Given that most jurisdictions that I am aware of have chosen to apply copyright law to software in a significantly more restrictive manner than 'classic' copyright, as in: hardly any equivalents of fair use are applicable, any technical copy of the software (including that made during execution of the software) is one that falls under the copyright holders' rights etc., I am tempted to say that you are overly cautious in just doubting seriously. Call me ethnocentric, but I am not terribly interested in the exceptions copyright law in Afghanistan possibly provides, if something works similarily in the USA, EU, Canada, Australia and Japan, we're mostly done anyway.

Regards,

 Walter



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