Petr Kadlec wrote:
...etc. The point is IMHO (IANAL) to protect the author from being coerced into an unprofitable agreement -- you know, you meet that Hollywood agent, he offers you a "generic EULA" containing fifty pages of petite text...etc. Not that I would think the law is correct; especially from the viewpoint of free software/free content, it is definitely close-minded.
Those laws were indeed written with in mind the individual author being coerced by publishers into signing leonine agreements (see for instance the push in the US to make musicians' work considered "work for hire").
I agree that the use of authors' right law for software is problematic (afaik, in France at least, there are specific conditions for software - for instance, software authors cannot exerce the withdrawal clauses that authors of novels can).