Tom says “In other words, all the lyrics herein should be treated as though they were in the public domain”, emphasis mine. That’s what got me curious.
Does Tom effectively still hold some rights that are not afforded by “true” public domain?
In the United States, copyright is automatic and exists until expired. Nothing in the federal statute allows an entity to terminate copyright, effectively putting works in the public domain.
The United States also allows authors (and heirs), except work-for-hires, to clawback copyright transfers and terminate licenses after 35 years. This is an inalienable statutory right, which means it cannot be waived even with a contract.
There's an interesting and formally unresolved (because the applicable window for the earliest "copyleft" works hasn't yet arrived, for one thing) question about how this interacts with things like CC0, GPL, and more informal licenses to the public at large. The law requires the termination to fall into a specific 5-year window, with advance notice in writing (and it must be multiple years in advance), served specifically to the person whose rights are being terminated.
The sheer logistics of trying to terminate a license granted to the world are therefore pretty difficult, but you could imagine termination targeting just a handful of lucrative targets. (Even then, when does a generally-available license "start"? When it's first offered? When the specific user first accesses the work? Is the timeframe "refreshed" every day the license is still on offer? This provision really wasn't written with these kinds of licenses in mind.)
It's probably one of the more complex parts of copyright law. There's a few well-known cases of section 203 being used to claw back copyright decades down the line. (Note: I'm am very much not a lawyer)
In 1938, John Steinbeck granted Viking Press rights to publish 13 of his works, including Of Mice And Men, The Grapes of Wrath, and Tortilla Flats, as long as they were kept in print and for sale. In 2005, John Steinbeck's son and granddaughter served notice to Penguin Publishing, who were the interested party at the time, that they were terminating the agreement.^2
This section was originally designed to give artists who may have essentially (or even literally) given away their rights due to inequitable bargaining power a chance to recoup their property down the line with at least several years notice that they are planning on terminating the agreement.^3 In practice, however, it's kind of a mess, and to say that it would allow an artist or their heirs to terminate a grant to the public domain is dubious. It's something that would likely see its way to the supreme court should it ever come to pass.
I've included a couple other articles here just in the general interest of providing more info.^4^5
[1]: https://www.copyright.gov/docs/203.html
[2]: http://billgablelaw.com/sites/law/files/TakingItBack.pdf
[3]: https://abovethelaw.com/2019/05/terminators-mount-up-section...
[4]: https://media2.mofo.com/documents/190700-all-shook-up.pdf
You can give up the economic rights and these are inherited and you can trade them.
Personal rights cannot be traded or inherited and remain with the author till their death. So you cannot change the text without author's permission, you cannot lie about who wrote something, and author can prevent you from using his art for a different purpose (for example if you wrote a song and somebody used it as a military recruitment ad and you're a pacifist - that sort of thing).
I'm not sure how this apply for software, I think it's less restrictive than for art (and it almost never comes up because Poland isn't a litigious country unlike US).
Or, if we want to avoid software: what's the status of a Wikipedia contribution (CC-BY-SA-3.0) made by a Polish resident? Can I not safely assume that the content is CC-BY-SA-3.0? Must I assume that a Polish author can come after me if I follow the letter of CC-BY-SA-3.0, but not in a way that he or she likes?
A lot of it is thanks to the fact that suing people is much less common here, so it never gets challanged. Also the person who lost the case pays the costs here unlike in the US so that's a deterrent.
I've looked into it now and it seems for software the personal copyrights are restricted compared to art. So for example you can't veto changes made to your software after you sold economic rights to it or using it for stuff you disagree with.
> Must I assume that a Polish author can come after me if I follow the letter of CC-BY-SA-3.0, but not in a way that he or she likes?
I think they'd have to prove that the way it's used harms them. It's not enough to say "I don't like it". But again IANAL.
There has been some cases for example about using Solidarity movement logo from 80s by various now-conflicted post-solidarity political parties and their supporters. I don't know who won, but I know that the author of the original logo was involved despite giving the rights to that logo to anti-communist opposition decades ago.
> Sorry, IANAL. Open Source software is written in Poland with all the usual open source licences and it works so I'm sure at least in practice it's not a problem.
But "in practice" is hardly sufficient :P
> A lot of it is thanks to the fact that suing people is much less common here, so it never gets challanged. Also the person who lost the case pays the costs here unlike in the US so that's a deterrent.
I'm a European too, and live in a very non-litiguous country, so I have no problem understanding the mindset of not suing over everything. But it still seems really weird for a country's copyright system to rely on this (sane) behavior.
> I think they'd have to prove that the way it's used harms them. It's not enough to say "I don't like it". But again IANAL.
So if a Polish resident contributes an original photograph to a Wikipedia article under CC-BY-SA-3.0, and I (or a Polish entity) use that photograph under the terms of the CC-BY-SA-3.0 in a way that "harms" the copyright holder, he can sue me (or the Polish entity in question) under Polish law? This seems absolutely insane to me, and surely can't be the case!
This sounds a lot like the license that Berkeley SPICE was under a long time ago [1], whereby it was essentially open source, but specifically the South African police were not allowed to use it. This kind of stuff – even when well-intended – causes massive headaches.
[1] https://perens.com/2019/09/23/sorry-ms-ehmke-the-hippocratic...
I would argue "in practice" is all that matters. No matter what you do if someone with enough power wants to fuck you up legally - he will. As true in USA as in Germany, Poland, Russia or North Korea. Only the probability is different. It's sad, but it's the reality we live in.
I prefer a system with obvious loopholes and low "getting fucked probability" (GFP) to a system with no loopholes and high GFP.
Government of my country in last 5 years broke constitution dozens of times, including unlawfully changing the election date, changing how judges are chooosen (making them dependant on the politicians), restricting many kinds of personal liberties like freedom of assembly without going through the proper process and many others. And nobody can do anything because they have political support because they gave away a big portion of yearly GDP to poor people.
Constutitional Tribunal said the government is breaking the law. Government ignored it and changed the judges (breaking the law again). Some people protested, most people ignored it. Now a PM that admited "our law breaks the constitution but I will vote for it" became the chairman of that Tribunal as a big "fuck you" to the opposition.
So what that our system of checks and balances was pretty good (I'd argue better than the one in Germany and USA) if the government just decides to ignore it and people don't care?
So I much prefer practice to theory. Good system doesn't work if people don't care. Bad system still works if people care enough.
> So if a Polish resident contributes an original photograph to a Wikipedia article under CC-BY-SA-3.0, and I (or a Polish entity) use that photograph under the terms of the CC-BY-SA-3.0 in a way that "harms" the copyright holder, he can sue me (or the Polish entity in question) under Polish law? This seems absolutely insane to me, and surely can't be the case!
I've looked into Polish description of CC-BY-SA-3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.pl
and it mentions "autorskie prawa osobowe" (personal copyright rights) as one example of additional restrictions.
> Licencja może nie zapewniać wszystkich niezbędnych zgód dla niektórych użyć utworu. Dotyczy to w szczególności innych praw, takich jak ochrona wizerunku, prywatności czy autorskie prawa osobiste. Mogą one ograniczać możliwości wykorzystania utworu.
Paraphrased (sorry IANAL and translating legalese is not my strong point): The licence might not ensure all required permissions for some uses of the art. It's possible especially in cases of other rights being violated, like the right to protect identity, privacy or personal copyright which might further restrict possible uses of the art.
I'm pretty sure Poland isn't the only country where there are additional restrictions, I don't know why you think it's insane honestly.
So it seems, only Polish coders need to be careful that when they use FOSS software, that they don't impinge upon the personal rights of any other Polish citizen who contributed code. I guess, to be on the safe side, they can decide to never impinge upon anyone's personal rights.