On Thu, Jul 31, 2003 at 01:32:48PM -0700, Daniel Mayer wrote:
Tomasz wrote:
It's legally impossible. Copyright assignment requires a real legal contract, and you can't make those with anonymous people, no way.
Have you taken any law classes? IANAL, but I have. Most contracts are informal but still binding - like when Jimbo assigned his own Wikipedia copyrights to the Foundation.
And also by using your logic we could not let Anons contribute at all since, under your reasoning, we could not bind them to the terms of our license.
Having an easy to find copyright policy and a one line sentence in the edit window "By clicking save you indicate that you agree to the copyright terms of this website" is more than enough.
Oh and newspapers, magazines and the equivalent online counterparts very routinely state that all letters to the editor or posts made to them by the public are their property.
"Ustawa o prawie autorskim i prawach pokrewnych" ("Copyright and related rights act"), article 53: Umowa o przeniesienie autorskich praw majtkowych wymaga zachowania formy pisemnej pod rygorem niewaznosci.
Contract of transfer of material copyrights requires written form to be valid.
Sounds like it cuts all the discussion, at least in Europe (such laws in Europe are regulated by international treaties and EU directives and differ pretty much only in details, so it's not likely to be any different in other countries).