On Friday, January 3, 2003, at 12:48 AM, Greg Hudson wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-01-02 at 21:34, B. W. Fitzpatrick wrote:
>> I don't think it's anything more than a matter of correctness. Any
>> lawyers here want to add their 2 cents?
>
> Well, most lawyers probably aren't interested in version control. :)
Actually, i'm a second year law student specializing in IP law.
:)
I've taken copyright law.
But i'm not yet a liar^H^H^Hawyer, and this certainly ain't legal
advice.
> But I've had a little training on the topic. As I understand it, the
> magic "Copyright" phrase is mostly a throwback to before the Berne
> convention (particularly the copyright symbol and the phrase "all
> rights
> reserved").
This gives me flashbacks to a copyright final.
"Which of the following notices is likely to give you the least amount
of protection:
....
"
:)
> I don't think it has any magic bearing in a court.
>
It doesn't matter for validity, it would matter for damages.
It also allows the innocent infringer defense.
> It does serve to document the copyright owner and the range of dates
> represented in the file. The dates will probably not be too relevant
> for about 95 years, when the copyright expires, and by then they will
> almost certainly be inaccurate.
>
> If we put "2000-2003" in files which were created after 2000, as well
> as
> files which were not modified in 2003, then we're documenting
> falsehoods, though not terribly important ones.
>
Be careful, since invalid notice can be the same as no notice (this may
or may not matter, depending on whether you care about damages, etc).
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Received on Fri Jan 3 08:01:30 2003