Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Linus Corrects Darl on Copyright Law

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the neither-of-them-are-lawyers dept.

cybermancer writes "ITWorld.com has a rebuttal by Linus Torvalds to Darl McBride's latest FUD on copyrights and Open Source. In a nutshell Darl states "SCO asserts that the GPL, under which Linux is distributed, violates the United States Constitution and the U.S. copyright and patent laws" and Linus points out that "the notion that the GPL has, of "exchange of receipt of copyrighted works," is actually explicitly encoded in U.S. copyright law". With Linus of course providing a link allowing the reader to see the law for themselves."

3 of 606 comments (clear)

  1. Larry Lessig Corrected Darl Too... by ausoleil · · Score: 5, Informative

    Mr. Lessig had an equally interesting rebuttal of the latest FUD from Darl the other day:

    http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/001611.shtml

    Despite RMS's aversion to the term, the GPL trades on a property right that the laws of the US and EU grant "authors" for their creative work. A property right means that the owner of the right has the right to do with his property whatever he wishes, consistent with the laws of the land. If he chooses to give his property away, that does not make it any less a property right. If he chooses to sell it for $1,000,000, that doesn't make it any less a property right. And if he chooses to license it on the condition that source code be made free, that doesn't make it any less a property right.

    The laws of the US and the EU don't purport to restrict the conditions under which the owner of a copyright in software might license his software (except in ways that are not relevant to this debate). Under those laws, the owner of this property right has the right to sell his property, or license his property, or lock his property in a drawer. Again, it is his property, and he gets to do with it as he wishes.

    The GPL thus precisely advances the "effect" of Congress's and the EU's copyright laws: it gives the owner of a property right the right to do with his property what he wants.

    Basically, Darl seems to be saying that copyrights exist only where financial gain is to be made...and somehow overlooks the fact that a copyright is a property and thusly may be dealt with as the owner wishes within the context of law.

    It's easy to see why SCO recklessly continues their pursuit of a fatally flawed litigation when the management of SCO has such a skewed and obviously fallacious view of American law. At the same time, you have to wonder why their legal team continues this pursuit with them. Surely they are smart enough to know at the end of the day (hopefully real soon now) they are all going to end up with large chunks of egg all over their collective faces.

  2. Linus, and Noah Webster by RealProgrammer · · Score: 5, Informative
    Because I was interested, I tracked down the Senate Judiciary Committee report (PDF) on the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1995. Here is the gist of the part I found most relevant:

    "... the principal behind the U.S. copyright term--that it protect the author and at least one generation of heirs--remains unchanged by the bill....

    "As the foregoing discussion indicates, the primary purpose of a proprietary interest in copyrighted works that is descendible from authors to their children and even grandchildren is to form a strong creative incentive for the advancement of knowledge and culture in the United States. The nature of copyright requires that these proprietary interests be balanced with the interests of the public at large in accessing and building upon those works. For this reason, intellectual property is the only form of property whose ownership rights are limited to a period of years, after which the entire bundle of rights is given as a legacy to the public at large."

    SCO's contention that copyright is primarily for the economic benefit of the copyright owner is utterly without merit. Copyright law exists to promote the advancement of knowledge. One of the tools it uses is allowing authors to be rewarded.

    The classic example is "Noah Webster[,] who supported his entire family from the earnings on his speller and grammar during the twenty years he took to complete his dictionary." (House Hearings on Copyright Term Extension Act of 1995, at 165.)

    A better example would be "Linus Torvalds, who used the notoriety he received from Linux to allow him to do what he wanted to do: write code."

    (I'm a computer geek, not a lawyer)

    --
    sigs, as if you care.
  3. Re:Linus is guilty of the same sin as Darl by Hallow · · Score: 5, Informative

    Darl's claim is that because there's no actual $$ changing hands with GPL licensed software, that it doesn't qualify as "financial gain" under U.S. copyright laws, and is therefore illegal.

    Linus is just clarifying what "financial gain" means in terms of the copyright code. Although most people see "financial gain" and instantly think $$, he points out that the legal definition of the term "financial gain" includes not only $$, but anything of value and actually goes so far as to specifically include access/use of a copyrighted work.

    It all depends on what your definition of "is", is, so to speak. But in this case the law defines the meaning of the term, which McBride has apparently gotten incorrect.