Thorsten Froehlich <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:
> stevenvh wrote:
> > Illegal? No
>
> Wrong!!! It is illegal to remove copyright notices from copyrighted works.
> The splash screen is exactly such a copyright notice.
>
> If you look even at say the GPL 3 draft (section 7, point b), you will
> notice that they explicitly allow authors to prevent removal of splash
> screens and such as an optional addendum to the license. And that is just
> one recent example.
>
>  Thorsten

Hmm....  It seems like if it's necessary to put something in a license it's
probably because it doesn't have blacket coverage stated in a law.
Therefore, to me it seems like the questions are whether indeed there is a
law preventing removal of any and all copyright notices, whether
suppression but not removal would count the same way*, and whether the given
copyrighted work has a license that insists users accept splash screen as a
non-disableable feature.

*If suppression were blanketly illegal, then another (kindof crazy) question
is whether a copyright owner can even authorize suppression via menu option.
I suppose the presense or absense of a menu option kindof implies a you-may
or you-may-not when it comes to that; the point is that if suppression
counted as removal, then it makes a blanket law regarding any-and-all
copyright notices more difficult. I.e. there'd be more dependance on
implicit or explicit licenses.  Also by "suppression but not removal" I of
course mean e.g. where the splash-screen shows up until you choose a menu
option, and is still always readily available from the Help menu.


Charles

PS, I know I'll probably regret posting.  I don't much like these thorny
threads, so why did I read all the way through it?

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