On Thu, 2004-07-15 at 05:05, Bart Schaefer wrote:
Copyright is not license.
Materials can be *licensed* under the GPL, and therefore freely copied, even when copyrighted. In fact, the entire basis of the GPL, as I understand it (IANAL etc. etc.) is copyright law -- someone has to hold a copyright on the material in order to have legal grounds for applying the GPL. If no one holds a copyright, then the material is in the public domain and the GPL is neither necessary nor applicable.
Jumping in late on this but you are correct. The GPL strongly relies on existing copyright law. The reason there's some confusion is that most people just automatically assign the copyright to the FSF or put nothing at all in for copyright. In the later case I _believe_ that the copyright falls to the author automatically. However, IANAL either.