Talthen wasn't entirely wrong but I think something was lost in translation. In a work
for hire the copyright is generally lost, at least in every jurisdiction I'm familiar
with. However, the moral rights may well not be.
In some jurisdictions, perhaps those Talthen is familiar with, it's not possible to
transfer moral rights and they remain with the creator. In others, they can be transferred
independently of the copyright. And in the US, for textual works, moral rights barely
exist at all and the issue almost doesn't exist for text.
US readers are probably not very familiar with the concept of moral rights and will
probably understand this better after reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights .
So, Talthen was wrong but he did incidentally point to an area where there's
significant international variation in law. Whether and to what extentthis matters to the
Wikipedia is uncertain but it seems possible that there's a jurisdiction where the
author, regardless of any contract with the Wikipedia, could insist on their moral rights
in local courts and complicate life for the Wikipedia if it had a local affiliate which
could be subject to legal judgements in that jurisdiction.
But this is all really pretty peripheral to the discussion of how varying laws relating to
fair use, fair dealing and such interact with the GFDL.
I'm not a lawyer; this is not legal advice; it is, though an accurate description of
the law - at least, in as much as anything can be accurate for several hundred different
jurisdictions/countries at once.:)
-----Original Message-----
From: Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)bomis.com>
To: wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 17:10:05 -0800
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] What would Richard Stallman say? (IP users)
talthen(a)wp.pl wrote:
Whether the
writer of the text is anonymous or not should have no
effect on these issues. The writer holds the copyright unless it is a
work made for hire.
Writer owns the copyright forever no matter what. Even if you
made smth for
hire, you still owns the copyright. Copyright is smth you can't sell, can't
buy, can't lose. "Copyright by John Smith" means exactly: "John Smith
has
made this". It's just to state the fact.
Look, I appreciate people chiming in with information, but if you
don't know what you're talking about, please don't chime in as if you
are speaking authoritatively. This is an unmoderated list, so you're
welcome to post, but really, I think a bit of restraint is in good
taste.
For the record, the stuff that talthen(a)wp.pl wrote is all completely
wrong, and has absolutely no applicability to anything we're
discussing.
And a lot of stuff that other people are writing, though I prefer not
to name names, is equally speculative and wrong.
--Jimbo
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