Convert GPL to MPL

[Philippe Verdy]

Arnoud Engelfriet [mailto:arnoud at engelfriet.net] wrote:
> John Cowan wrote:
> > Arnoud Engelfriet scripsit:
> > > French law has perpetual moral rights, but e.g. in Germany they expire
> > > when the economic rights expire. I don't think England has perpetual
> > > moral rights, so legally I'd be in the clear if I omitted
> Shakespeare's
> > > name from my translation.
> >
> > And the U.S. allows no moral rights in textual works at all.
> 
> Which is a gross violation of the principles of the Berne Convention.
> 
> (The flipside is that US authors don't get to exercise their moral rights
> anywhere in the world.)

Fully agree with you! There has already been decisions in US courts, forcing
US companies to respect the moral rights owned by foreign authors protected
by laws of Berne convention signatory parties, and even forcing them to
indemnify these authors for their abuse.

US respects this international convention and certainly don't want to break
it.

And it's not always necessary to start a trial within US, if there's a
treaty of collaboration between juridic systems: an action against an US
offender can be initiated in its own country, where a court order will to
solve the litigation will become applicable in US using a simplified
procedure not requiring a new trial and decision by a US court.

Note however that the juridic collaboration is limited, notably from US that
severely limits this collaboration and wants its citizens being judged in US
in most cases; this can be the cause of diplomatic litigation and
negociation between the two countries. However, if a court decision has
already occurred, US can't contest this decision, but could seek
arrangements to negociate the application of the terms of the decision, and
find reasonable "equivalences", but this is only accepted to protect the
Constitutional rights. However, such restriction by Constitutional rights
applies essentially to individuals, not to organizations.

Foreign moral rights ARE recognized in US (and this is already largely used
by US corporations when they want to protect these: they will claim their
rights by demanding protection in countries that define and protect these
rights, in addition to registering their rights in US; for this, they create
a collaborative work and the copyright notice includes the names of their
foreign subsidiary establishments).

This is also used by influent US people that have a legal right of residence
outside US, and this is also used when any US citizen travels abroad: their
moral rights are claimed in the countries they visit (for example in France
where they can prosecute paparazzi that violated their private life: France
effectively protects the moral rights and each year, its courts are taking
lots of decisions on this subject; the French jurisprudence on moral rights
is abysmal since very long, it will be hard to defeat it if you violate
them).