Re: Copyright/license issues (was: [COMMIT] sign & encrypt changes)

[Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk>]

Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> writes:

> All the assignments the have received from me are illegal in the
> strict sense of the word: as a German, I cannot assign copyright, only
> ea usufruct of a copyright (commonly called exploitation rights). 

Is that still the case?  Danish copyright law was changed a few years
ago to allow transfer of "all rights", making it much more similar to
US law.  I assumed this was some kind of EU standardization.

In any case, I doubt my assignment on "future work" would be valid in
a Danish court, it is too generic.  So I might be able to stop
distribution of Emacs temporarily in Denmark.  I guess the free
software community would survive ;-)

> But if someone illegally assigns copyright in the majority of the
> cases (e.g. if there is a third party having rights to the code),
> that's not the problem of the FSF, but of the poor developer.

It could become the FSF problem if the rightful owner tried to stop
distribution.  But it might protect them from having to pay damages,
they are clearly in good faith.

As I said before, it is all a question of multiple lines of defence.