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Copyright Protection Problems For OSS Project
An anonymous reader writes "There's a federal case in the Northern District of California where copyright for open source is being challenged. The free software project JMRI discovered that a commercial company was
using some of their files in a product, in violation of the license. They added a copyright claim to an ongoing legal action about cybersquatting, software patent abuse, etc. The patent case was covered on Slashdot back in June but the copyright part is new. The other side came back with an argument that copyright law didn't apply, simply because they software was 'being given away for free.'"
I'm sure MPAA, RIAA, ESA, BSA and friends will have something to say aboutthis. Some of their software then gets hit pretty hard (demos aren't copyrighted, snag the code!; MP3s of songs; clips of movies; movie promotional materials on a website...)
But the counterargument is that since they're self-evidently not following the terms of the license, then they don't have a binding contract, hence we're back to a copyright violation.
So, prediction: they're going to lose.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Yeah, right.
You'd think- but the asshole (Matt Katzer) filed an anti-SLAPP lawsuit in response to a lawsuit seeking him to cease and desist (he was hounding a government research facility that was employing one of the JMRI authors and JMRI had enough)..basically won it, and got over $30K for his attorneys...and that's AFTER their claims for legal fees were determined to be excessive/unreasonable, and reduced!
He's run out and filed patents for stuff days after someone else announced they developed it...then turned around and demanded hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties. Made absolutely insane, blatantly false assertations.
Both his lawyers should be disbarred based on the level of falsehoods present in court filings. EFF, where the hell are you? I'm always hearing about I should donate to the EFF, but I don't see them doing a fucking thing for JMRI to fend off this sleaze.
Please help metamoderate.
The RedHat support contract probably limits transfers and precludes sublicensing. The GPL, on the other hand, requires that you use the GPL in all derivative works and whenever you redistribute a GPL work. A support contract refers to a service; the GPL, to a text. They're largely incomparable.
I used to think that a career change from software developer to lawyer would be a fairly easy and natural progression. After all both professions are all about understanding the rules and figuring out the more optimal paths that both follow the rules and produce the desired result. It ought to be a cinch.
Except for one crucial difference.
In the software world each code path either works or is broken - there may be multiple paths that produce the same result, but their correctness is black and white. In the legal world, nothing is black and white. What "works" one day, may be broken the next day depending on who the observers are (judge, different lawyers, etc).
That kind of behavior is so totally effed up from an engineer's perspective that only an insane engineer could ever become a good lawyer. The law is really just a huge collective bong party - everybody toking up and then speculating out loud about their deepest philosophical insights into the universe. It all comes down to how well you can convince other people that the words of the law mean what you want them to mean and not what someone else wants them to mean.
People all laughed when Clinton (a lawyer, like most politicians) made that statement about "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is" But given the context that the law is all about arguing over the meaning of words, it is perfectly natural that he would say that. Still totally effed up, but in a perfectly natural way.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
They certainly don't assert that copyright doesn't apply for Free Software or Open Source. This same exact argument could be used on a shrinkwrap EULA "violation."
I guess it does raise a technical issue, though. When a creator and a user don't actually meet, sign contracts, etc -- when licensing gets implied -- how do you decide it if actually happened?
For example, with either a Microsoft EULA, or GPLed Linux, or whatever, at some point a user may decide to do something that is not Fair Use under copyright. Maybe they want to modify the software and sell 10 copies to someone else (in the case of GPL) or maybe they want to .. uh .. actually I can't think of any rights that MS EULAs grant, but let's ass/u/me that there's some sort of reason a person might want to agree to it. (?!)
When the user goes ahead and does the licensed copyright violation (e.g. selling 10 copies of Linux), it is argued that either they have violated copyright, or they have agreed to the license. Now let's say they are also doing something that is not permitted by the license (such as selling copies of Linux w/out offering the source). So now, they're either violating copyright, or they're violating the license. How do you know which one they did? Just like Microsoft's relationship with their users, you don't have any evidence that they ever accepted the license.
If they sue you for copyright violation, just say you accepted the license -- and then they need to sue you for breach of contract instead. If they sue you for breach of contract, say you didn't accept the license, and then they'll have to sue for you copyright violation instead.
Without evidence of what happened, you make 'em sue you twice. Of course, the second time (assuming they have any lawyer-money left), they've got you.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I'm not saying anything. The judge in Graham v. James , 144 F.3d 229, 236 (2d Cir. 1998) has said that a "copyright owner who grants a non-exclusive license to use his copyrighted material waives his right to sue the licensee for copyright infringement" where "non-exclusive" means third party redistribution. The exact interpretation of the ruling, and the precedent it sets, is one that threatens the GPL.. why is it so hard for people to accept this. The judge wasn't thinking about the GPL when he decided this, so he didn't take the uniqueness of the GPL into account, but that means nothing. His finding is a valid framework for building a defense against suit by a copyright owner who has used the GPL. It sucks, but there it is. Now, if the judge in this new case has any sense he'll through it out because he'll fully understand what the intention of the GPL is and that the GPL is adamently clear in this purpose, but he might not! If that happens, we're all screwed. So stop saying "is not" and think about it.
How we know is more important than what we know.