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GPL Hard to Enforce?

the-dark-kangaroo writes "The GPL may be difficult to enforce due to a lack of clarity over who owns the copyright to the software, according to a legal expert. Lucie Guibault, an assistant professor of intellectual-property law at the Institute for Information Law in Amsterdam, said at the Holland Open Software Conference in Amsterdam, that the GPL should clarify who is the author of the software to ensure that open source software distributed under this licence receives legal protection."

21 of 361 comments (clear)

  1. Enforce my FP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    it's hard to enforce such a post.

  2. I GOT A GREASED UP YODA DOLL SHOVED UP MY ASS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    GO LINUX!

  3. Re:Derivative Works? by Deekin_Scalesinger · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    *points* Lawyer!

    --
    "As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
  4. 3rd psot by FaramirTook · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    thrid psot

  5. Re:Stupid stupid article by ScrewMaster · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Sure you can! Hell, Gates & Co. do it all the time. Witness SCO, and every "comparison between {insert non-Windows OS here} and Windows(tm)" ever subsidized by Microsoft. But yeah, this is pretty awful.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  6. Re:Derivative Works? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic


    Most students would simply go to another country without these restrictions, such as United Kingdom, Germany or other countries with good educational opportunities.

    This is the US shooting itself in the foot - the international intelligentsia who come to the US contribute significantly to the American society. By restricting what they have access to, you're restricting their contributions.

    Consequently, they'll simply go elsewhere, where there are similar opportunities without such draconic laws. The result? The US will lose out on a lot of very smart people who until now saw the US as a good destination for education and research.

    And you must also keep in mind that a lot of these folks do stay back in the US after higher education and become permanent residents or citizens - discouraging them from studying and you've lost a lot of talent preemptively.

  7. Re:copyright assignment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    This is not about terrorism, this export tax. It's about people going to the US to study and work in America, who are from India, and then taking the knowledge back to India, along with all the business.

    My opinion is that it's a free country, but does that make it a free world? Should people be able to move all the business out of one country to simply make a buck? Maybe that's not ethical if you're gaining the knowledge from the country in question. But maybe there is a better twist to it...

    I'm Canadian and I have tried outsourcing to the US before with my LAMP

  8. Re:Tell that to Harald Welte by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    It is vitally important to get a receipt when using the lavatory!

  9. Re:It's pretty simple... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Granted, I'm from canada, but work as an undergraduate student on a civil engineering project, with the brains being an Iranian post-doctorate student. The foreign students always seem to be the hardest workers around the University, it's incredible. Even if I consider myself generous of my time, most of these people never look at the time, and pull incredible shifts, coming in during the weekends and staying late to finish off presentations for next week. I cannot imagine this being any different in the USA. I'm not sure governement workers will pull long hours to grant those permits. Modern day research cannot allow itself such a blatent chokepoint.

  10. Re:It's pretty simple... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Students from India, which has cordial relations with the U.S., will need licenses to study, but students from Saudi Arabia -- home country for most of the participants in the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, and much of the financing and ideology behind Islamist terrorism -- will not.

    I think what's far scarier is that the country that Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczynski come from doesn't have this restriction. They're able to go to US universities without licenses.

  11. Re:It's pretty simple... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    It seems that by if this were in the interest of security, they would be required to include Saudi Arabi in the list of contries. By including India, it almost seems like a backwards attempt to limit foreign students from replacing Americans in the technical fields. I am not sure if that is a conspiracy theory/tinfoil hat kind of thought, but something seems odd about this entire piece of legislation.

    First of all, like someone mentioned, anything you can learn in the US in a classroom is already published somewhere. The same textbook you buy for your class is probably on Amazon.com for anyone in any country to purchase. Teaching an Indian student about Nuclear Engineering is really not a security concern. If that student was intent on learning nuclear technology to create WMDs, there are other countries they could go to anyway to learn.

    Placing restrictions on education is the last thing we should be doing. With the general population dumbing down, we should be accepting anyone willing to learn. Highly educated people are becoming few and far between. I don't care if the next guy that designs the power plant that keeps my house lit up is Indian or American, as long as someone learns how to do it.

    I don't want to get politcal, but this seems like a situation entirely fabricated by the government for some kind of hidden agenda.

  12. Re:It's pretty simple... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    The relevance is that this is being introduced in the name of security. The point is to restrict education of possible military knowledge to people from countries we are worried about. That is exactly how Saudi Arabia fits into the issue. It's not a slam on Saudi Arabi, nor is anyone saying that Saudi Arabians are all evil, but if you are restricting people based on the potential military threat of their home country, Saudi Arabia probably should be at the top of the list.

    The USA is definitely overpopulated with it's own terrorist. That is one reason I hate how all of a sudden the general population thinks all Muslims are secretly plotting the annihilation of our country. These same people that apparently love freedom, democracy and the US are the ones harassing people exercising their freedom of choice at the clinics. Apparently, to some people freedom is only a good thing when it is a subset of things you agree with.

    These types of issues are used as scare tactics by politicians. It works for them because people don't think about things. They believe most of what they are told.

  13. Re:In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    WWII was about Eugenics and superiority through control of genetics.

    Blanket statements such as these always invite the inevitable discussions. ("No your wrong!" "You suck!" "No YOU suck!"). World War II had many causes. Unlike some other wars which can be traced back to a single cause, WWII's causes included:

    European theater

    • Hilter's desire to return Germany to first class world power status after being humilated by the Treaty of Versailles.
    • Hilter's policy of "living space" which demanded the forced exodus of people of slavic origin in order to make space of his "Master Race." And my forced exodus I also mean the systematic genocide of entire races. (The eugenics you speak of).
    • Domination of the European continent, politically. Hilter's Germany probably would not have occupied France and other Western European countries if Germany had won the war. Instead they would have set up satellite states similar to the Soviet Union's Warsaw Pact.
    • Mussolini's desire to elevate Italy to first class world power status.
    • His own imperial desires to conquor the Balkens, Greece, and North Africa in order to make modern Italy a second "Roman Empire."
    • Britian and France's inability to recognize Facsim as a threat they had to match early on, instead appeasing Hilter and letting him "annex" the Sudatenland, Austria, and Chezkoslovakia. (okay not really a cause but not everything is Hilter's fault)
    Pacific Theatre
    • Japan's desire to become a first class world power.
    • The Japanese military government's view that an overseas empire would make it less dependent on foriegn raw material. Specifically oil which it had to import. ("Foriegn dependence on oil" sound familiar?)
    • The miltary's desire to conquor China for it's fertile land and resources.
    • Japan figuring that it was better off fighting the US in one crushing blow instead of negotiating.

    Of course I havn't touched on all the causes and I am sure I got some of my details wrong. In addition I am sure I made a blanket statement somewhere that will invite discussion.

    Oh well. :\


  14. Re:copyright assignment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    There's a big difference though. The old testamant part you are talking about refers more to the laws governing Israel. And according to the Bible the land of Israel is limited to a particular area.

    There was no call of expansion to other territories. Sure the chosen people were called to wipe everyone out in the promised land, but once the land was taken, that was it. This is unlike the practice of many other nations and peoples of around that time.

    So whilst Israel was deadly to the Canaanites (that said Israel disobeyed and intermarried), it was no threat to most other nations.

    Christianity is expansionist, but if you look at what the religion actually says, it encourages _love_ and _service_ as part of the expansion process. Spreading Good News, and making disciples of men. Not spreading violence and making corpses of men.

    The "architecture" of Islam as a religion is more prone to violence than the other major religions. And in Islam, the killing isn't restricted to any particular area as far as I know.

    If any muslim objects to me saying that, he should start objecting to the action of his brothers first. Muslims like to loudly object and claim that Islam is a peaceful religion, but their voices are rather too muted when their brothers interpret/practice Islam in violent ways. Their brothers can quote Islamic verses justifying their actions, can the pacifists/moderates manage to counter those verses with other verses?

    Contrast the Jewish laws - the death penalties etc are for people living within Israel or Israelites who break the various laws.

    Buddhism is pretty much a pacifist religion. Hinduism is a bit harder to pin down, but I sure don't see that many calls to violence from their holy scrolls/books.

    With Capitalism (with the big C) - it seems killing people is OK if it is more profitable to do so, than to not do so.

  15. Re:Derivative Works? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Surely there's oodles of prior art back on the old 8-bits?

    I fondly remember invaderload on Alpha Centauri!

  16. GPL Hard To Enforce by FusionDragon2099 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    In other news, water is wet, fire is hot, and MS is the devil.

  17. Re:Wrong! -- Berne convention by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I understand the impluse to optimize the amount of money returned on an investment, but this is bullshit. I guess I will have to start dumping my audio out to my hard drive and burn from there.

    These guys need a serious kick in the ass. I'm buying my son a Nintendo instead of a PS3.

    They aren't getting one more dime from me.

  18. Re:It's pretty simple... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Sony has a simple solution: STOP SELLING Sony brand CDRs!! -of course, theirs has such a high error ratio that I usually buy TDK...
    To use an analogy: if a company sells super fast car engines, then wrings hands about all the terrible speeders on the highway, hypocrisy has found a new watershed.

  19. Re:Stupid stupid article by ic3p1ck · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    +5 Funny

    Arg where my mod points when I need them!!

  20. Not all distributions are equal. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    For a truly superior computing experience, I recommend Greased-Up Yoda Linux 1.0.

  21. Re:In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    seriously. WWII (Europe) happened because WWI.