Re: Copyright symbol SOLVED

[Reinhold Kainhofer]

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Am Montag, 12. Januar 2009 schrieb David Raleigh Arnold:
> This could never have happened if the symbol were present in any
> header example or template. Every copyright notice should have
> the symbol, because without it it's not a copyright notice.

So, where's the problem? Copyright exists as soon as a work is created (yes, 
also in the US since it joined the Berne convention in 1989; In Europe that 
has always been the case, anyway), irrespective of whether you put a notice 
in.
This has not always been the case in the US (see e.g. the UNIX / BSD 
lawsuits), but things have changed and copyright protection now exists 
automatically, as soon as a protectable work is created. The lengths of the 
protection might vary, but the Berne convention declares some lower bounds and 
some reciprocity rules.

> "Public Domain" is not a copyright notice, and it is altogether
> unnecessary for any purpose.

Huh? By declaring something public domain, you are explicitly waiving all 
rights that you otherwise have automatically (in continental European 
jurisdictions you can't waive your droits d'autheur / moral rights, but at 
least you can give an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive license to the 
world to use your work). If you don't insert any notice, you'll automatically 
have full copyright protection by the Berne convention (transformed into 
national law by each of the member countries, which is then the actual law 
that protects your work). One point where a notice might become relevant is 
that (at least here in Austria) for works where authorship is unknown, the 
protection is 70 years from creation, while for works with a known author it 
is 70 years after the death of the creator.

Cheers,
Reinhold

- -- 
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Reinhold Kainhofer, address@hidden, http://reinhold.kainhofer.com/
 * Financial & Actuarial Math., Vienna Univ. of Technology, Austria
 * http://www.fam.tuwien.ac.at/, DVR: 0005886
 * LilyPond, Music typesetting, http://www.lilypond.org
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