[python-uk] copyright info in source

[Russel Winder]

On Mon, 2013-09-09 at 16:14 +0100, Daniel Pope wrote:
> You don't have to include a notice of copyright to enjoy copyright
> protection (under the Berne Convention). Nothing is assumed to be public
> domain unless it is explicitly disclaimed as such.
> 
> Since licence terms are based on copyright I don't think you need to state
> it everywhere. If someone fails to receive a copy of the licence they can
> assume no rights to copy your code.

Whilst you are correct that this has been agreed by case law for books
and magazines (the so called moral rights), as far as I am aware there
has been no case in the UK that has provided case law for this. Legal
advice is always to put an explicit statement of copyright, copyright
owner and licence in all files. The issue here is "explicit is better
than implicit" (*). 

The difficulty, at least in UK precedent, is to know the provenance of
the content. Has the material been copied via a route that creates a
public domain work. This sort of thing is far easier to trace for
physical works.


(*) See what I did there?

-- 
Russel.
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Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder at ekiga.net
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