3 ms·
While I don't know if license and copyright are the same thing, the film Night of the Living Dead was famously accidentally added to the public domain due to a
by fhdkweig 9mo ago
While I don't know if license and copyright are the same thing, the film Night of the Living Dead was famously accidentally added to the public domain due to a forgotten copyright notice.
- compass_copium 9mo agoI believe that was a forgotten renewal of copyright status.
- throwaway150 9mo agoWow. I didn't know that. Looks like this is a very US thing. I looked up now and TIL that US adopted the Berne convention as late as 1989. I'm surprised. So this movie released in 1966 didn't have default "all rights reserved" due to Berne convention. But most European countries, like 80%, had adopted the Berne convention by 1925. So when software was developed in Europe they automatically got "all rights reserved".
- whstl 9mo agoThat's because the US was not part of the Berne Convention until 1989, so before that U.S. works often had protection only if certain formalities were met (like registration or notice).
- wang_li 9mo agoCopyright is a right held over the ownership of a piece of IP. A license is a permission slip that allows you to exercise actions that would otherwise be reserved by copyright. There is no requirement for a license. It's not a state of a piece of IP.
- mod50ack 9mo agoThey aren't the same thing. Under US law pre-1989, publication without notice would lead to a loss of copyright, but publication WITH a copyright notice, that is, publication of a copyrighted item, meant all rights were reserved (unless licensed).