Hallo,
I have a little question concerning the GPL.
As stated in the Berner convention about the author law, you have two kind of rights in the author law: the moral rights and the ability rights(? the right of reproduction, public announce right, ...).
You can give away your ability rights, but you always get to keep your moral rights. But what when I release my software under the GPL?
Thanks in advance,
Rudy Gevaert wrote:
You can give away your ability rights, but you always get to keep your moral rights. But what when I release my software under the GPL?
The GPL is based on US copyright, and so (like US copyright law) pretty much ignores moral rights and the Berne Convention except where convenient. Section 106A of the US Copyright Act is a copy of article 6bis Berne Convention, but rarely used in practice.
Anyway. Using his moral rights, the creator of a work has the following rights (article 6bis Berne Convention):
* The right to claim authorship of the work. * The right to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to the work, which would be prejudicial to his honor or reputation.
The GPL requires the inclusion of a copyright notice which includes the author's name (article 1 GPL). This is usually enough to satisfy the "claiming authorship" provision.
The "derogatory action" clause of 6bis BC is a bit more difficult. This right usually cannot be given up or transferred (otherwise every publisher would insist authors give it up every time). The GPL thus by law cannot regulate anything regarding this clause. Any clause that tries to take away this right is automatically null and void.
This means that recipients of a GPL-licensed program are not allowed to modify the program in such a way that it hurts the honor or reputation of the original author. This has to be determined on a case-by-case basis, and so it's difficult to say when this is the case. However, given the nature of free software and the GPL, it seems unlikely the author could claim damage to his reputation because of bundling with Windows software, or because of use of his software in a program used for (to him) unethical purposes like weapons development or digital rights management.
You may want to read http://www.iusmentis.com/copyright/crashcourse/rights/ or the Dutch version at http://www.iusmentis.com/auteursrecht/spoedcursus/rechten/ http://www.iusmentis.com/auteursrecht/nl/vvv/exploitatie/#persoonlijkheidsre...
Kind regards,
Arnoud