Date: 09 Sep 1999 15:31:29 -0400 From: Lowell Gilbert <lowell@world.std.com> To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Berkeley removes Advertising Clause Message-ID: <rd6yaef51bi.fsf@world.std.com> In-Reply-To: "David Schwartz"'s message of Wed, 8 Sep 1999 20:16:53 -0700 References: <000001befa71$c3920e10$021d85d1@youwant.to>
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"David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com> writes:
> Legally, pretty much the only difference between a derivitave work and the
> original work is the person who did the deriviation might have rights to the
> derivative work. All you have to do is change every space to two spaces and
> you have made a derived work. The rights of the original copyright holder to
> the derived work are precisely the same as to the original work.
I Am Not A Lawyer, but this is completely wrong. First of all, a
quick check of the US Copyright Office showed me that the definition
of a derivative work requires an "original work of authorship." It
also gave as an example the fact that making spelling corrections
wouldn't qualify, but writing a new chapter would.
Furthermore, if the original is still in copyright, its owner's
permission is needed to create a derivative work in the first place,
but (as best I can tell without spending a lot of time on it) the
original's owner does not automatically get any rights to the changes,
which belong to the person who wrote them. The rights to the original
material are unaffected by the creation of the derived work.
I don't think this has much impact on whatever the original point was,
but copyright is misunderstood enough without propagating further
misinformation.
Sorry for the interruption; you can go back to your regularly-
scheduled open-source license flamefest now.
Be well.
Lowell
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