On 5/10/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
That is totally... strange.
Well, not really, I believe similar provisions are in many other law systems. E.g. in Czechia, our Copyright Act reads:
Article 11: (4) The author may not waive his personal rights; these rights are non-transferable and become extinct on death of the author. The provision of paragraph (5) shall not be affected.
(5) After the death of the author no other person may claim authorship of the work; the work may be used only in a manner which does not depreciate its value and, unless the work is an anonymous work, the name of the author, if known, must be indicated. Protection may be claimed by any of the author's kin 1); they shall maintain this authorisation even after the passage of the term of economic rights to copyright. Such protection may at any time be claimed also by the legal entity associating authors or by the relevant collective administrator of rights in accordance with this Act (Art. 97).
Article 26: (1) Economic rights may not be waived by the author; such rights are not transferable and are not subject to the execution of a ruling; this provision shall not apply to claims arising from such economic rights.
Article 46: (2) The author may not grant authorisation to exercise the right to use the work in a manner which has not been known at the time of the conclusion of the agreement.
...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.
-- [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]]