Strong Court Ruling Upholds the Artistic License

dilute writes "The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (an authoritative court that normally deals with patent law), has issued a strong ruling (PDF) upholding the Artistic License in a copyright dispute between the developers of the Java Model Railroad Interface (JMRI), and Kamind, a company that used portions of DecoderPro to develop a competing product. The product at issue was DecoderPro, an open source project released on SourceForge under the Artistic License, for interfacing with model railroad control chips. Kamind used a number of DecoderPro files in developing its product, Decoder Commander. However, Kamind did not comply with the Artistic License in a number of respects, including attribution, copyright notices, tracked changes or availability of the underlying standard version." Read on for more, below. Dilute continues: "The lower court denied relief, saying that the Artistic License merely imposed 'contractual' promises, and that a violation did not constitute copyright infringement (any contract-based relief would probably have been meaningless). In a strong ruling, the Federal Circuit found that the Artistic License is legally enforceable, that its terms constituted 'conditions' for reliance on the license, and consequently that a violation of those conditions would put the violating product outside the license and thus make the violator a copyright infringer, potentially liable for an injunction. The case lays out a clear and compelling description of the rationale for open source, and reflects a complete willingness by the court to lend the force of law to these licenses." Reader ruphus13 point to Lawrence Lessig's commentary on the ruling; Lessig calls it "huge and important news," and notes that the reasoning is generalizable to the GPL and other Free software licenses, as well.

Comments

Good for GPL but...

[Anonymous Coward]

; Lessig calls it "huge and important news," and notes that the reasoning is generalizable to the GPL and other Free software licenses, as well.

As well as most EULAs I suppose... or is a legal distinction made between license for personal use vs. license for redistribution?

Re:Good for GPL but...

[Sloppy]

the reasoning is generalizable to the GPL and other Free software licenses

As well as most EULAs I suppose...

Let's all hope. This could totally trash EULAs that some people have been attempting to enforce despite the other parties never taking the offer.

JMRI: we offer you the terms of this license, if you are not satisfied with the rights and prohibitions of copyright law.
Kamind: Fuck you.
Court: Very well, forget the license, since you're obviously not electing to take the deal that JMRI offered. The terms of copyright law are now in force.
Kamind: May I create and sell derived works?
Court: Copyright law says you may not.
Kamind: oh, crap.

Apple: We offer you the terms of this license, if you are not satisfied with the rights and prohibitions of copyright law.
User: Fuck you.
Court: Very well, forget the license, since you're obviously not electing to take the deal that Apple offered. The terms of copyright law are now in force.
User: May I install the software I bought on my computer even if Apple didn't make the computer?
Court: Copyright law says you may.
Apple: oh, crap. we should have required signing a sales contract, as a condition for obtaining the software.
Blizzard: oh, crap.

Re:Good for GPL but...

[Sloppy]

An interesting situation comes up when companies don't put any indication of an EULA on the packaging at all

Like this this? You and I are unusual people; yes, we read slashdot, follow trends in the software industry, and know that many, probably most, proprietary software packages come with some sort of statement about a license. But if Joe Sixpack looks at that page the above link points to, he would have no idea that a transaction between him and Amazon causes him to be bound by a contract with a third party. He would have no reason to even suspect it. By the time he receives the box, whether there's something printed on the outside or the inside, he has already paid Amazon.

And god help him if, when the box shows up on his doorstep, someone else (e.g. his kid) opens the box and installs it on his computer. With every other contract in every part of my life, there was never even a chance that someone else who doesn't have power-of-attorney (or good forgery skills), could perform an act that gets me into a contract unknowingly. And that's not surprising; it's fundamental to the concept of responsibility.

It gets even weirder to think that when the box arrives, Joe Sixpack owns the box and its contents, but as soon as he (or someone else!? see above paragraph) looks at it or opens it and becomes aware of the existence of some license, his ownership ceases and is replaced by licensing. I guess we should call that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of software ownership.

If the courts assert the license is binding anyway (and the courts have to, since none of the legislatures have done so), they are making a very special case, where purchases of this one type of product (software), works unlike anything else in the realm commerce.

You have the right to return it if you don't accept the license agreement.

That right is asserted inside the license. Taking advantage of that, presumes that the unwitting buyer has already read and accepted the license. What if that's not the case?

Whether the store wants to make it easy is another matter. This is a case whether common practice differs from the legal requirement.

That just points out Yet Another paradoxical consequence of the ProCD court's misunderstanding. If users are bound by Apple's license when they buy software from a third party like Amazon, how did Amazon avoid being bound by the license when they bought the software from Apple? Professional resellers are even more informed about this subject than users; there's no way they can credibly assert ignorance of the contract, if users can't. The fact that "common practices" contradict a supposedly-binding requirement on the reseller, makes one question whether or not it's really a requirement.

Unconsenting/uninformed licensing raises too many paradoxes and weird situations that defy common sense and common law. It will eventually be overturned.

Which version?

[FilterMapReduce]

It is interesting that the Artistic License has passed a legal test of sorts, considering that it has been criticized as one of the more shoddily-written licenses out there—at least, version 1.0. I mean, look at this (from the "Definitions" section of 1.0):

"You" is you, if you're thinking about copying or distributing this Package.

That reads like someone tried to satirize the "legalese" present in most licenses rather than create a working license for themselves. Also, the license is automatically binding for anyone who is thinking about using the license? Compare to a Creative Commons license, where

"You" means an individual or entity exercising rights under this License...

You'd think programmers would know better than to let ambiguities like that by. (And incidentally, some people have similar concerns about the language in the GPL: it has a conspicuous lack of "legalese", which might make it easy to read, but also risks ambiguity popping up in a court case down the road.)