156603 - about: Remove bogus "All rights reserved" text from bullets

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(mozilla.org :: Miscellaneous, task)

Description

[Jeremy M. Dolan]

"All rights reserved" is a useless phrase and makes the bullets in about: wrap
and look bad.

From Terry Carrols well known documentation on copyright law:

One of the earliest international copyright treaties to which the U.S. 
was a member was the 1911 Buenos Aires Convention on Literary and 
Artistic Copyrights (see section 4.1 for more information).  This treaty 
provided that, once copyright was obtained for a work in one signatory 
country, all other signatories accorded protection as well without 
requiring any further formalities (i.e., notice or registration), 
provided that the work contained a notice reserving these rights.  The 
typical notice complying with Buenos Aires was "All Rights Reserved."

As noted in section 4.1, the Buenos Aires Convention is essentially dead 
today, and the "All Rights Reserved" notice no longer serves much useful 
purpose.  It lives on mostly as a testament to inertia on the part of 
U.S. publishers.

This was written in '94. A '98 update from the author stated:

the only remaining country that was a      
signatory to the Buenos Aires Convention, but not to either the Berne        
Convention or the Universal Copyright Convention has joined the Berne        
Convention. Now, rather than being "essentially dead," the Buenos Aires      
Convention (and the "All Rights Reserved" notice) is completely dead.

Comment 1

[Jeremy M. Dolan]

Attachment: patch

As long as legal is looked at this, don't we need to update the license data
from MPL/NPL to GPL/LGPL/NPL, and do we really need the gov't notice as a
"commercial item"?

Comment 2

[Jeremy M. Dolan]

->me

Comment 3

[Jeremy M. Dolan]

namachi, someone said you'd be the person to r or sr this... please take a quick
look... thanks

Comment 4

[Shiva Thirumazhusai]

Product and Component does seems to be right. ccing asa and steve to get more
attention.

  

Comment 5

[benc]

This needs to be qa assigned.

Comment 6

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

This kind of change is not merely a code change where simple r/sr rules apply.
Legal-ish things, even if trivial, need OK from [e-mail]

I see Asa, Hecker and Mitchell are cc'd here so that's the right audience.

Comment 7

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Mitchell says:

"Not without advice from an IP lawyer about the continued value of keeping this.
 I knew hte answer years ago when we addd it -- at that time it still had legal
effect in countries that hadn't signed the Berne copyright Convention, and thus
still required specific words to maintain one's copyright.  I don't know the
current status. I would mark "won't fix" unless someone has ability to do the
reasearch and demonstrate that this no longer adds anything."

So I think you'll need to email her direct and make your case, if you think
you've done the required research.

Gerv

Comment 8

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

not a networking bug. 

Comment 9

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

No one has come forward with that research so marking wontfix. Feel free to
reopen if you can demonstrate that this provides no value.