Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Not only that, the article being from American media, even with the footnote, the commenters, miss the whole point about copyright being exclusively American concept and we don’t have this in EU. We have IP and authorship rights that work differently. See last part for explanation: https://thehftguy.com/2020/09/15/french-judge-rules-gpl-lice...


I suspect that the legal differences are less than claimed.

The first test of an open source license in court was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobsen_v._Katzer. It was initially lost on a somewhat similar argument. Namely that it was a contract, not a copyright license, and then was an unenforceable contract and therefore invalid. This decision was reversed on appeal.

I have no particular reason to believe that the first French judge to rule on an open source license did a better job than the first US judge to do the same. Both ruled against the license.


That was 2020. The case evolved in favor of the GPL, see e.g. https://www.april.org/violation-d-une-licence-libre-entr-ouv...


since when copyright does not exist in Europe?


For instance, in Poland (which is in Europe) you have all rights to create copies of software, music, movies, for your personal use after paying for the original copy. You cannot do this under copyright which strictly forbids you from creating copies of the original media. Copy-right, as a right to create copies.

In this meaning, copyright is not the same as authorship rights, which is a basis of intellectual property protection in Europe.

Similarly for software patents, they do not work in EU.


> you cannot do this under copyright which strictly forbids you from creating copies of the original media.

copyright having exceptions does not mean that copyright does not exist

unless you claim that copyright does not exist in USA because they have fair use?


It's badly expressed (and not exactly relevant to the train lockout issue), but no, Copyright as in the american sense does not exist in Poland, and similarly in many other European countries.

That's why we have the relevant legal act discuss separate aspects of "moral" and "financial" "Author's rights" to a creation, instead of just singular "copyright", and why American-style "public domain" does not exist in Polish legal system, or that of many other EU countries (US' style public-domain involves effectively losing all rights to the creation, including moral ones, whereas those are non-dismissible, non-transferable and permament in Polish law).

The exact way things differ would probably require a philosopher and a lawyer to discuss differences of.


It was introductory lecture not treated really seriously, but what was described to me is that there is

(a) copyright (b) moral rights

which are separate. Maybe it was badly described or I misremember what I learned decade ago.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: