[LAU] Yamaha Disklavier Pro grand piano

[Roberto Gordo Saez]

On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 07:39:18AM -0400, drew Roberts wrote:
> > That paragraph is over-simplified, there are many other things to take
> > into account. First one and most important is that the author is not
> > bounded by the GPL terms, so the requirement to place notices in the
> > files when they are changed can only be really enforced for
> > contributors.
> 
> Well..... but does the author remain THE author once there are other 
> contributions in that file?

Ouch... it was not my intention to turn this into a legal thread :-/
I hate copyright (and laws in general), and the details are complex and
horrid (at least under my point of view), but sadly they are part of
our world. If you are curious, you can find many details here:

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html

groklaw.net is a very recoomended source for all interested in legal
matters, specially oriented at free software. And Lawrence Lessig books
are all great.

I'll try to give an answer to your question (though it may not be
completely accurate, and there are differences between countries):
since Berne Convention in 1989, everything is copyrighted by default, and
an explicit copyright notice is not required anymore. It is also not
required to register a work in an official registration office. If the
author does not attach his own copyright notice, nor publish the work
with his name, nor officially register his work in a copyright office,
he will be still the copyright holder, though it could be difficult (or
maybe impossible) for him to prove that fact. Note the difference
between being the copyright holder and proving it. In complex cases,
a judge decission would be needed.

The author has "magical powers" for each work it creates, and nobody
else has permission for those works, unless those permissions are
granted by him. The GPL and other free licenses are a way to use
copyright law to grant those permissions to the public, by using the
copyright in inverse form (hence the copyleft term). For this reason
it is very important to attach clear notices to free software (or free
artwork), because by default, nothing is permitted.

I've had a long and heated discussion time ago in debian-legal because
many free programs do not include copyright notices for artwork, or
they use artwork copied from unknown places. Sadly, with today laws,
most likely anything you find in the Internet is copyrighted, even if
a copyright notice is not attached. People working on free software
usually don't copy source code from unkown authors; when copying
code from other free program, the author is properly credited and it
is OK. It should be the same for artwork, it is a risk (specially for
distributions) and never a good idea to use something when the source
and license is not clear.

I've also noticed that many people place his samples (or photos, or
other kind of works) in the Internet for free, with the intent to share
them for everybody use. Many times those persons do not attach a
copyright notice because they don't want to restrict the usage, but it
is a shame, because the usage is restricted by default; if the intention
is to make them free, it would be far better to place those works under
a CC-BY or other permissive license (in the US it is also possible to
donate a work into the public domain, but this is not always true in
other countries).