License Question

[Nunim]

I just got a free script and it under the GPL:

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
GPL

Then the author has a line that says:

Do NOT remove this code below!!!

Aren't I allowed to modifiy as I see fit? Thanks.

 

[pynchon]

Is that part of the code critical to how it works.

Or is part telling who orginally created it.

If you just using it for your own use. You can delete it and do what ever that you want.

But if your doing anything else with it I would leave it alone.

 

[Nunim]

I was gonna use it on my site it has author's linkback and a few other pages. Really looks stupid.