Programmers – sort your rights?

A new ruling from the UK asserted a software developers rights to copyright even though they were not contractually asserted. The write up in Out-Law summarises that essentially in UK law copyright exists with the author unless an agreement exists to the contrary. The case shows how much confusion exists about licencing and software and this issue really does need addressing. Any coders out there should makes sure they understand their rights to the work they produce as should commissioners of any work.

Increasingly though with open source repositories of code being shared and re-used and remade it is becoming difficult to decide who is the real copyright owner. There is lots of case law to work through and that’s got to be be good for lawyers fees but what is really needed is a fundamental rethink of how copyright works in relation to digital works since most copyright law was created about static media print etc.. Creative Commons and Debian give a good starting point, especially for open source materials. However what is also needed is a lot more education for the thousands of smaller companies and developers entering into software arrangements.