My friend was about to release a MyBB theme but I stopped him because he didn't include any kind of license. So I'm curious. If someone releases a theme with a copyright in the footer, yet, doesn't include any license, can the downloader essentially claim it as theirs by removing or replacing the copyright?
Yes. At the very least make sure he creates his own license which simply prohibits copyright removal and claiming work as your own. Doesn't need to be some fancy rigamarole.
I'm just going to save him the trouble and ask here. Does GPL already have that rule in-place? (You can't remove or edit the copyright)
As far as I'm aware - no. You can't take a work and call it your own but you can still remove copyrights, as you can with MyBB.
Thanks guys, I'm going to tell him to use Creative Commons.