OSDL Position Paper on SCO and Linux

cshabazian writes "The OSDL has released a position paper raising serious questions about SCO Group's threatened litigation against end users of Linux. The position paper, which casts doubt on SCO's position, was authored by one of the world's leading legal experts on copyright law as applied to software, Professor Eben Moglen of Columbia University."

Comments

Re:Ugh. ENOUGH of SCO

[saskwach]

There's an easy way to avoid this: go to your user settings and tell it not to put stories about Caldera on your home page. Seriously, the tools are there, use them.

Re:Users liable? Someone thinks so.

[schon]

Re-read that..

Linux enduser license agreements are an 'as is' contract... Linux users aren't protected from copyright or intellectual-property infringement claims...

First, there are no "Linux enduser license agreements" (except perhaps the one from Caldera), so whoever wrote this knows jack about shit.

Second, even if there were Linux EULAs, it would still be irrelevant, because he's saying "the EULA doesn't protect you from copyright or IP claims" - all the while ignoring the fact that people would be immune anyway, as they're not copying anything.

If the New York Times got sued for plagarism and lost, would that make it's readers liable? Of course not. This is really no different.

at least one lawyer thinks users could be liable

No, actually - at least one lawyer, who doesn't have a clue about the facts in the case, thinks that an EULA (which doesn't exist) wouldn't stop liability, when standard property-rights laws would.

Only for US copyright law - not true for the UK

[geeklawyer]

IAAL - and I do software licensing & copyright.

Prof. Moglen makes the point that mere use of a program doesnt infringe the copying provisions of the Copyright Act. That may or may not be the correct analysis, noonetheless its worth pointing out that this is only true for US law. UK readers may be interested to note that under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act section 17(6) (here)the making of transient or incidental copies is an infringing act i.e. the mere act of loading it into RAM.

In the UK therefore users of 2.4 kernels would not have this defence if SCO is right. The same may be true elsewhere in the EU.