[dvd-discuss] Themes and Copyright

["Michael A Rolenz" <Michael.A.Rolenz(at)aero.org>]

http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/598/

<snip>
"Taking a conservative view of intellectual property law (as distributions such as Debian are obliged to do), just because a theme was posted doesn't give  me any right to use it, much less redistribute it. To pass it on, I need explicit permission, and I need to be able to properly credit the copyright to the   author. Posting it on a site that lists a license (e.g., freshmeat) helps, but the license is too easily separated from the content -- one download, and it's   gone. "

<snip>
"  In preparing Debian's sawfish-themes package, I've tried to contact perhaps two dozen theme authors. Amongst other things, I've found that theme
 authors, as a group, are really nice folks. Every author who returned my mail was entirely friendly and affable, generally happy to see the themes
 redistributed, and willing to clear up all copyright and license issues. Some were more helpful yet, leading me through the histories of certain themes and  pointing me to previous authors. Sadly, some authors' email addresses are no longer functional, or were never included; when I couldn't contact the   authors, I couldn't include the theme. Some excellent themes had to be excluded for this reason. "


After reading this my thought was...you know....EVERYTHING that's come from the Berne Convention is totally unsuited for the copyright system needed for the Internet and the 21st Century...