Re: Copyright assignment policy

["James Henstridge" <james jamesh id au>]

On 12/03/2008, Александър Шопов <ash contact bg> wrote:
> > IANALTTL (I am not a lawyer, talk to Luis), but my understanding
>  > is that copyright assignment requires signing a piece of paper to
>  > be valid.  I don't think private email exchanges cut it, legally.
>
> I am unsure as well.
>
>  Luis, could you elaborate on this?

If this is a case of people just putting "Copyright FSF" on files and
nothing more then this is harmful.

If a situation came up where it was necessary to defend the copyrights
on those files and the FSF couldn't prove that they own them it would
be a problem.

The most important thing to do is make sure that the copyright
messages are accurate.  If there is a problem, at least there will be
a chance to contact the copyright holders (the same is true in the
case of license changes).  This goes for everything: translations,
code, documentation, artwork, etc.

James.