Re: COPYLEFT SIGN

From: Markus Kuhn (Markus.Kuhn@cl.cam.ac.uk)
Date: Tue May 16 2000 - 07:34:55 EDT


Michael Everson wrote on 2000-05-16 10:29 UTC:
> Ar 12:42 -0800 2000-05-15, scríobh Bernd Warken:
> >> You cannot stipulate this. "Copyright" is commonly translated.
> >
> >In German, it is not translated.
>
> So what? Germans say "Software" too, with an English pronunciation of
> "-ware" despite the perfectly good German word "Ware". "Copyright" is
> translated in other languages. We say "cóipcheart". We call software "earra
> bog". In French, "copyright" is sometimes used, but "droit d'auteur" is as
> well.

Again just for the record:

"copyright" and "droit d'auteur" are technically two VERY different
things, and one is *not* the translation of the other, at least not for
anyone with a bit of clue about the relevant legislation. Similarly, the
German legal language knows the three different words "Urheberrecht"
(originator right, "droit d'auteur"), "Nutzungsrecht" (usage right), and
"Copyright" (copyright). Essentially, "copyright" is a certain type of
combination of both the originator rights and the usage rights into a
single legal construct, which is a mostly formerly American/British law
concept, that differs essentially from the classical European
intellectual property legislation (which got eventually exported into
the US via the Berne convention).

Markus

-- 
Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK
Email: mkuhn at acm.org,  WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>



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