Is there a legitimate need for license text? Yes. I won't get into the idiotic "EULA dance" Slashdot armchair lawyers engage in. 'EULA' is not a term of art. A document calling itself a EULA means whatever it says it means. It could also call itself a Pony License if the licensor wanted.
An SLA, regardless of what it is: proprietary, BSD, GPL, contains a great deal more than simply a license grant. It is an agreement that imposes specific terms and restrictions on all users of software. It contains a number of important notifications by convention (because inclusion in the license is the easiest way to give valid legal notice and prove knowledge in litigation), from warranty disclaimers, limitations of liability, choice of law, trademark/patent notices, and other relevant concerns. In any given SLA, the license portion is dwarfed by the other portions.
In any software exclusively distributed under an SLA, it is the only way you obtain a valid license under copyright and the only way you come into legal possession of a copy. Therefore, the idea that an SLA "takes away" rights is legally, technically, mechanically, and semantically incorrect. The copyright holder has the sole, exclusive right to authorize who may acquire a copy, how they may do so, and what rights are vested in that copy. Without legal possession, you have zero rights to the work.
Some SLAs give you more than others. That's a fact. But it's entirely up to the copyright holder, while the copyright is in effect, to determine who gets a copy and/or shares in exclusive rights.
There's no need to agree to the copyright restrictions, because by default you have no right to redistribution unless it's explicitly granted.
By default you have no right to anything unless it's granted. If the copyright restrictions are a condition of lawful license, then you must agree to them to use the software.
The GPL exists in this way because the notice portions of the license (the bulk of the text) apply to everyone. The license portion tells you that no restrictions apply to your personal use of the software, but that certain portions of the granted rights (namely distribution) are subject to restrictions. Contrary to the text, you must accept that the license contains those restrictions and notices in order to use the software. The way that licensing law works, you cannot ignore the terms ever. You cannot say that the license only comes into effect when someone wishes to distribute, because the grant of rights occurs at the time of acquisition. The limitations must apply at the same time, or they are not valid.
Everyone must accept the GPL, because the specified method of acceptance is performance (i.e., exercising your legal rights)--there is no way to use the software without accepting, regardless of the license text's badly worded "you do not need to accept to use" which really is not a license term under contract law, but a notice that end users are not subject to the restrictions.
If you did not accept the terms of the license or the various notices contained therein, you would have to not use the software at all. Any use constitutes acceptance of the terms and restrictions and acknowledgment of the notices and disclaimers.
It's not rocket science. If a license agreement says that you agree by performance, and you perform, you've agreed. If the GPL wanted to make an exception (which it doesn't, because the owner wants all non-license portions to apply), it would have to add, "Use of this software by end users does not constitute acceptance" to its assent provision.
And your post presumes that the company would find it economically feasible and sound business to bring the product to market, whether the patent was public domain or not.
The thing is that these patents are often first steps, not final steps, and NASA requires additional funding to bring any of this to market. What reason does a business have to pick up the tab if it can't exploit that investment afterward? It would serve to give a competitive edge to...competitors, which is self-defeating, particularly in the kinds of research NASA engages in.
Instead, that research is publicly funded. Whether it results in anything useful or not, the money is gone. Why shouldn't NASA be able to sell off some of that research to enable further research? Let's look at a simple example: say NASA funds a $5 million development project, turning up some patentable invention. That's just the patent. Bringing it to market costs $10 million more.
Do the taxpayers want to give NASA another $10 million (we all know the answer), or would they rather earn back $4 million and have to wait 20 years before it can be freely exploited? This way, the public is out $1 million and has to live with a patent, but it gets a useful product out of it.
The other way, the public is out $5 million, and there is no useful product. It's not perfect, but "the people" have continually balked at increasing expenditures to cover the full cost of this sort of research.
"In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea..." 17 USC 102(b).
Thanks for playing. Excellent, you have conceded that in the absence of any law to the contrary that is the standard applied to all actions and behaviors.
No. Absence of law == anarchy.
But it is a moot point because there are five levels of law to the contrary.
Weave a rug, the rug is yours but if someone else sees the rug they have every natural right to make a rug with the same pattern.
This is independent creation and merger. It does not apply to slavish reproduction of a work, ever. Natural ability != natural right.
A lot of people on this site prefers "FSF-libre" to proprietary software because they are freer to use it for what they want/need.
And it's a great tool for that. What it is not, however, is anything appreciably like "free" in the literal sense.
The holy wars are absurd. A software license is a tool. You use the one that does what you want. "Freer for your purposes" doesn't mean "free". It is a political and polemical distinction that is disingenuous at best.
You must agree that it's closer to "true libre" than proprietary offerings.
No, I must not, because it is not. It depends entirely on who you are and what you want it to do. It releases some restrictions while imposing others. A certain community may view it as more consistent with their desires--but another may view it as less consistent with theirs.
The only licenses that are appreciably close to the "libre" definition of 'free' are the BSD-style licenses. Freedom of options means freedom for everyone.
Proprietary licenses favor creators and upstream developers, GPL licenses favor users and downstream developers. They're just different tools. There are so many licenses out there, both proprietary and open source, that anyone can maximize "freedom" for whatever they want--or create a new license to do so. To talk about one being more "free" than the other is something GPL zealots do, and wrongly. You rarely see other open source proponents with the fire and brimstone shtick. It's obnoxious, it's factually wrong, and it's counterproductive.
Copyright is not a natural or moral thing. It exists only because of law. You do not naturally or morally own an idea.
Copyright doesn't cover ideas. The rest of the analysis cannot stand when you commit so grave an error at the outset.
Because you can't stop me is natural law.
No, it's not. Natural law is a premise flowing from the essence of an act. You have a natural right to life. Because you can't physically stop someone from taking your life does not mean killing is a natural right.
"Because you can't physically stop me" is by definition the absence of law.
If you've got the authority to make such a claim, this link should open right up for you. Since, however, you are clearly both not a lawyer and utterly wrong, I guess this settles it.
I write a poem. I hand you the poem. By default, there are no natural or moral restrictions on what you can do with that material.
No. You're glossing over the part where copyright engages. You write a poem. It is entirely yours to control. By default, there are no natural or moral restrictions on what you can do with the material, having created it yourself.
Now you come to the "handing" off. What are you surrendering? Certainly not authorship or attribution, artist's rights that always remain with the work. Are you handing off ownership? Sometimes. Are you providing it conditionally? Almost always.
"Because you can't physically stop me" is never a justification for an act in a society. I do not subscribe to your view that a creator has no natural right to his creations. It's textbook cognitive dissonance.
If Copyright law does not impose a restriction upon what you would like to do with the material, then you retain your natural right to do whatever that may be.
This applies to the author, in whose body is vested a full set of rights.
"Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following" 17 USC 106.
In other words, if it's not prohibited in 107 et seq., the copyright holder can do it. That includes authorizing reproduction, performance, and distribution with whatever limits the copyright holder chooses to enact, barring independent illegality. The copyright holder can choose to do so in the form of an abdication of copyright (public domain), a blanket grant of certain rights (license grant), a grant of certain rights for certain purposes (limited license grant), a grant of rights in exchange for a return promise by the licensee (a license agreement), or a sale or transfer of those rights to a third party (assignment).
If there is no EULA, there can be no restrictions beyond those imposed by copyright law because an end-user is under no obligation to enter into an agreement with the copyright holder to exercise rights they already have.
This is correct, if the author chooses not to impose additional or different license terms. But in the case of most software, the authorization comes in the form of a conditional grant, without which, you have no rights to the work whatsoever.
So you're obviously trolling or ignorant and have never read the GPL. It's a distribution license, not a use license.
And you've never been to law school. A distribution license is a use license.
"Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted"
Did you read that? Each one is a use of an exclusive right. By excluding "running" from any restrictions, they are providing you with the terms of the license: an unrestricted license to run, and restricted licenses to copy, modify, and distribute.
Several courts have completely disagreed with you, by the way.
No, not at all. In fact, we just had Katzer to validate everything I just said. Your confusion notwithstanding, this is all relatively straightforward.
You don't need to agree to anything to maintain your rights under copyright.
You need to agree that the GPL, which came with the product, does not give you a right to distribute, even though distribution is one of the rights granted.
The GPL explicitly states this and your freedom to not accept the license and continue using the product. A developer cannot sue you for simply using a GPLed program without accepting the license.
He can't sue you because he's granted you the license. You are not free to refuse the text of the license--it provides notice to you of essential terms: warranty disclaimers, limitation of liability, notice of no right to distribute.
If you want to distribute, though, you need to agree to the terms of the license because these rights aren't given to you under copyright law.
Your agreement is based on your use of the software. It says so explicitly. You are not free to ignore the license at any time after downloading the software.
If you could ignore it, it would not be enforceable. There is a difference between not being restricted and not being applicable, and it's one you don't seem to be getting.
Finally, EULAs in general don't "grant rights... based on the exclusive rights held by a copyright holder." They only enact restrictions on the rights of the purchaser.
No, because a SLA is the only way the seller is willing to convey the work to you. Let's take a look.
"Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:" 17 USC 106.
To do and to authorize. In whatever form they elect to do so.
In other words, if it's not prohibited in 107 et seq., the copyright holder can do it. That includes authorizing reproduction, performance, and distribution with whatever limits the copyright holder chooses to enact, barring independent illegality. The copyright holder can choose to do so in the form of an abdication of copyright (public domain), a blanket grant of certain rights (license grant), a grant of certain rights for certain purposes (limited license grant), a grant of rights in exchange for a return promise by the licensee (a license agreement), or a sale or transfer of those rights to a third party (assignment).
If there is any right being granted on the condition of a return promise, then it is an agreement. Full stop.
If the authors of the GPL wished to grant a pure license, there would be a separate document containing a separate grant of the distribution right. By including them in a whole, the entire grant then becomes subject to the agreement of the restriction--if no agreement is required, then the document grants the right of distribution, and, having no return promise, the copyright owner cannot compel contribution of source code. That the restriction only applies in a certain circumstance is immaterial. All users must agree not to distribute without sharing source code, whether they intend to distribute or not, because it is part of the conveyance.
And I just assumed that you have a copyright system in the US because congress chose to use that power.
No, we had a copyright system in the US long before Congress existed. We also have a copyright system in this country independent of federal law, and if Congress were to stop using that power, the states would codify common law copyright. Of course, Congress is legally obligated to maintain the system as a signatory of Berne.
As such, it looks to me like a congressional decision, not an administrative one.
Again, please refer back to my previous post. The only free speech ramification pertains to the subject of independent creation and is an administrative (and judicial) creation, not a Congressional one.
Now, when we talk about distribution, the accuracy of "free" is more dubious.
And therein lies the problem. Gratis is pointless--there are plenty of gratis proprietary titles.
Oh, you tickle me so. 17 USC is a copyright license; it establishes conditions under which a copyright holder cannot sue--in other words, statutory license.
Further, 17 USC 117(a) doesn't establish legal possession of a copy or a license of copyright, but only that one who already HAS legal possession is not guilty of infringement by copying it into RAM. It has no bearing on whether you have permission to use the work in the first place, which is the issue here.
This addition was a direct response to court decisions holding that software could not be copied to and from memory under the default statutory scheme. It was passed in the early 80s, when computers were new and judges uncertain where the future was heading.
So I don't have to contribute code, because I've already got a license, with no terms that I had to agree to, and you've said it's not binding anyway, so I've got the grant without the restrictions, because you can't impose restrictions on a grant, except in scope, unless you have an agreement.
This really isn't rocket science.
No, it's stated: "Acceptance Not Required for Having Copies.
It can say whatever it wants. That doesn't change what it is. If you do not accept that your right to distribution is limited, you have no license.
If you have to agree to do something in exchange for a right, it is an agreement.
That sentence is simply to inform you that you have no obligations as a user--not that you haven't assented to the license agreement. It's badly worded and utterly ignorant of licensing law
If I sell (or give away) a product with no warranty, I don't require the user to agree.
You most certainly do. You state your terms, and by going through with the transaction, they've agreed to be bound by them.
If they did not agree, then you can't enforce those terms against them, and you then can be sued for breach of warranty.
This is why I said would not otherwise be allowed.
You miss the essential point: copyright law is what makes these possible. Copyright law must be open to modification in order to make the GPL possible.
That is just what the GPL does. This isn't want an EULA does (at least, the ones that people criticise).
Neither the GPL nor a "EULA" does anything different from the other. Both grant rights and enact restrictions based on the exclusive rights held by a copyright holder. The copyright holder is under no obligation to surrender any portion of those rights to you, except under the terms they provide, with a few caveats. If you'd care to submit a provision from a EULA that isn't a restriction on scope and that you find objectionable, I'd be happy to discuss it.
congress limited free speech with regards to copyright.
No, Congress did no such thing, because free speech has never covered appropriation of the speech of others. The only such restriction is an administrative, not Congressional, one, and it pertains to the intricacies of independent creation.
Most people do mean "free as in speech".
They can't, because then there is no distinction between "free" and proprietary software.
Developers are "free as in speech" to release their work in whatever form they want. "Free" software has limits on it too--just different limits.
"Free as in speech" is a reference to the concept of liberty, but it's a faulty one, because they're not opening up--they're doing so in exchange for something, which is neither gratis nor libre.
If it's not binding, it's not enforceable. If it's not an agreement, then you have the full right to use, modify, and distribute as per the license grant--since you never agreed to perform a return act in consideration for those rights.
You are free to ignore it.
I believe the FSF and the courts disagree. Moreover, the developers disagree--if you can ignore it, you can ignore the limitation of liability and the warranty disclaimer.
The GPL does not - rather, it grants extra freedoms (which, incidentally, is where the word "free" comes in) that wouldn't otherwise be allowed under copyright law.
Nonsense. Under copyright law, on a daily basis, I negotiate and grant distribution rights to licensees. Under copyright law, I draft letters about GPL enforcement. Under copyright law, copyright holders are allowed to sell or license however much of their work they wish to.
Once one legally acquires software, one is legally allowed to use it as per the terms of copyright laws in most countries. Permission from the vendor is not required.
You're begging the question. Permission from the vendor is required to "legally acquire" the software. If that permission is conditional, based on what they have decided to sell, then you're right back here.
*ALL* contracts cover things which are not present or required by statutory law. By definition, that is why they exist.
This is not a right the vendor is legally able to extend under the copyright act.
Citation needed. You won't find one.
The Copyright Act specifies what both customers and owners can't do. If it's not prohibited by the Act or independently barred by some other law, it's valid. This is why no court has ever--EVER--dismissed a case or claim based solely on the fact that it existed in the form of a license agreement.
they must engage in a legally binding contract with the recipient prior to sale or transmission.
You do not need to accept terms in order to buy a box. You can purchase or otherwise legally acquire a package without having intent to use it, whether as a gift or simply for its physical components or aesthetic appeal.
Only the user asserts any rights under copyright, and only the user must accept the conditions of that use. We just had, barely a few months ago, a grounded court decision on the Artistic License--that it was enforceable just as any other software license. You don't get one without the other.
If it didn't cover use, you wouldn't be able to use it. All the warranty and liability sections and everything else applies to use just as much as it does to distribution.
GPL'd software is copyrighted software. You do not have the right to possess, perform, reproduce, modify, distribute, or display copyrighted works without acquiring such rights from the copyright holder. The GPL is what gives you those rights and so it by definition must cover use. That it imposes no particular restrictions or requirements (beyond your acceptance of no owner liability and no warranty of any kind) is in itself significant.
You do understand that free speech works exactly as you describe here?
Not the way the Slashdot crowd understands it and distorts it. After all, any mention of the word copyright is bound to be followed up by some prattling buffoon saying that copyright restricts "free speech" (it doesn't) because it prevents you from "speaking" a certain sequence of characters (it doesn't) or prevents you from using that knowledge (it doesn't).
Slashdot never refers to free speech as it actually exists in law, but rather as it exists in their heads, where anything they can do is something they should have a right to do.
Free beer and free speech are simple analogies, but be careful about nit-picking with them.
I'll stop when they stop distorting the law.
If they're going to insist that "free speech" means "freedom to copy and distribute at will", then I'm going to hold them to it. GPL included. This is the consequence of their collective disingenuity.
when people discuss free software in the open source sense they mean free as in speech.
No they don't.
If they did, it would be released into the public domain. Instead, it is copyrighted, with the restrictions in place relating to what that particular community thinks is an acceptable "price" for use, modification, and distribution rights. Sometimes it's truly free, like that users can do what they want in terms of using GPL software, but other times, it's not, like when you want to assert a right to distribution.
The major function of a EULA is notice. The license grant and restrictions is one or two sections of a greater document. The whole notion of a 'EULA' in general is an attempt to draw a false distinction between some kinds of SLAs and others, and to give the peanut gallery a chance to mangle semantics of utterly zero legal significance. They're all essentially the same. They all take the same form and become binding the same way. Yes, even the GPL. It's a fairly standard structure: recitals, definitions, license grant, license restriction, term and termination, warranty, liability, litigation provisions, and miscellaneous (trademark/patent license terms, export terms, international law issues, etc.).
They differ only in content and the nature of the restrictions. They're all license agreements. A license is just the grant and term. What an "end user" is or whether that's the scope of the license is up to the particular agreement, and people are entirely too sloppy with their use of the term 'EULA'--to the point that it is meaningless.
All of this is to say nothing about the obvious difference between the license on the use of the source code and the license on the use of the branded binary, which are two separate products.
Privacy advocates are more than welcome to refuse to send pictures or videos.
They are also welcome to decline to call 911 at all, since doing so would give away their location, along with some valuable personal information they do not wish to disclose, such as the fact that their home was currently being broken into.
Who knows what strangers would do with all that information!
After the initial novelty wears off, I can't imagine "people thinking it is funny" being a worse problem than any other means of "pranking" emergency services. The population of 911-abusers is still the same size; this just gives them more tools for their mischief.
That will greatly reduce the demand for lawyers and.... um.... nevermind.
No, it wouldn't. "Loser pays" just changes who writes the checks, not whether the costs are covered.
But more importantly, the reason is that "loser pays" only stops those people in the middle zone of plausibility from risking legal action. The people making the egregious, psychotic claims are either too delusional to realize their folly, or they have some other objective. Either way, the idea of them eating the costs either doesn't occur to them or doesn't matter, so loser pays only punishes those people with reasonably good cases that just didn't break their way.
The knife's edge cases are important, because they help define the elusive boundaries of the law, and by doing so, are the main engines of change in established law. You move the mountain one boulder at a time. Loser pays makes legitimate people afraid to take on legal teams that dwarf their own financial resources (like, I don't know, large telecom corporations) due to risk of financial obliteration when handed the corporation's bill.
We already have a mechanism for an award for fees and costs where appropriate.
Video chat. Video blogging (including those idiotic Youtube "response" videos). Personal grooming without a mirror. Quick photos (for example, showing your friends a funny wine label without having to find a digital camera, sync it, and then resize the giant 5-8MP image to send via the web). Barcode scanning (for Delicious Library, etc.). Profile photos for social networking and the like.
There are plenty of uses. Not all of them apply to everyone, and certainly not all of them are listed here.
No, statutory copyright has always been at least 28 years (14+14), since 1709, when it coincided roughly with the expected length of an artist's career. It was subsequently extended as life expectancy increased, artists began working earlier with the fall of apprenticeships, adjustments to bring back some of the more expansive common law copyright terms, and ultimately as part of a larger sophomore effort in the US to protect assets and pass them on to future generations.
There has never been a 14-year limit on copyright. Common law copyright, further, had much longer terms of protection (but in some cases narrower in scope).
The US incentive-based rationale has bent from global pressure in artists' rights societies (including the EU) to extend copyright to what has become the global expectation. Even within the United States, copyright was always intended to ensure than any profitability of a work would be under the author's control. Copyright terms that are too short allow third parties to come in and profit directly from a work--anathema to artists' rights, and clearly in violation of the spirit of an economic incentive rationale.
Revert to 28-year copyrights and you'll see staggered release, withholding of production, and lower expenditures on the more expensive works. Keep in mind that a commercially successful work must not only pay for itself, but also for the commercial failures, which require time, money, and effort, too. Back when copyrights were shorter, there was nothing so costly as a motion picture or a major software title.
If the concern is record profits for a few firms at the top, it's unfair to single out one industry for that. It's a problem that must be dealt with in e.g., tax law. If the concern is greed and abuse by the record labels, which is certainly reprehensible, then it must be dealt with by dealing with the businesses. With the exception of the CTEA, prior copyright extensions were based on the beliefs of the international community and a focus on the artist's use of his works. The CTEA was purely economic pressure, but it is consistent with European terms.
The term of copyright has very little impact on new works of art. There is no appreciable shortage as it is, and no requirement that an artist use the full term of protection.
No, but since Obama supporters like you are now making him the candidate of "if you point out any error or inconsistency, my supporters will ignorantly accuse you of being an enemy operative", maybe it's not such a bad idea.
No, that's a lie. Obama never committed to public financing.
The hell he didn't. He's the one who brought it up as an issue. He made it a point of contention with Hillary Clinton, and then turned it on the Republicans. He made the proposal in response to the other candidates hedging on the issue--only to hedge himself, and flat out walk away from his own proposal. He allowed the media to talk about his pledge, his plan, and his commitment while it suited him and was working in his favor. Then he lied about his reason for not taking the money.
Since the option he took has even fewer restrictions and no need for loopholes, he can't complain about a "broken" public fund. It's not broken, except that you can bypass the requirements and limitations by opting out. Since that's exactly what he did, though, it's no protest.
"I proposed a novel way to preserve the strength of the public financing system in the 2008 election. My plan requires both major party candidates to agree on a fundraising truce, return excess money from donors, and stay within the public financing system for the general election. My proposal followed announcements by some presidential candidates that they would forgo public financing so they could raise unlimited funds in the general election." He made the proposal. HE was the one who made the issue into a campaign issue. He walked away, paying little more than lip service to the idea.
And now you're saying that a pledge and a commitment isn't a promise. Where is this candidate of change and new politics, exactly? He looks exactly like all the other ones.
Tapper, an Obama supporter, summed it up perfectly: "Declaring independence from a "broken system" by breaking a promise. Obama hopes you'll care more about the former than the latter."
As a liberal, it's the latter that matters, especially when the former is largely a lie. A liberal who tolerates this is no liberal at all, but rather an ideologue trapped by a cult of personality, and unfortunately the Democrats are joining the Republicans in that growing population.
Slashdot Mirror
Is there a legitimate need for a EULA?
Is there a legitimate need for license text? Yes. I won't get into the idiotic "EULA dance" Slashdot armchair lawyers engage in. 'EULA' is not a term of art. A document calling itself a EULA means whatever it says it means. It could also call itself a Pony License if the licensor wanted.
An SLA, regardless of what it is: proprietary, BSD, GPL, contains a great deal more than simply a license grant. It is an agreement that imposes specific terms and restrictions on all users of software. It contains a number of important notifications by convention (because inclusion in the license is the easiest way to give valid legal notice and prove knowledge in litigation), from warranty disclaimers, limitations of liability, choice of law, trademark/patent notices, and other relevant concerns. In any given SLA, the license portion is dwarfed by the other portions.
In any software exclusively distributed under an SLA, it is the only way you obtain a valid license under copyright and the only way you come into legal possession of a copy. Therefore, the idea that an SLA "takes away" rights is legally, technically, mechanically, and semantically incorrect. The copyright holder has the sole, exclusive right to authorize who may acquire a copy, how they may do so, and what rights are vested in that copy. Without legal possession, you have zero rights to the work.
Some SLAs give you more than others. That's a fact. But it's entirely up to the copyright holder, while the copyright is in effect, to determine who gets a copy and/or shares in exclusive rights.
There's no need to agree to the copyright restrictions, because by default you have no right to redistribution unless it's explicitly granted.
By default you have no right to anything unless it's granted. If the copyright restrictions are a condition of lawful license, then you must agree to them to use the software.
The GPL exists in this way because the notice portions of the license (the bulk of the text) apply to everyone. The license portion tells you that no restrictions apply to your personal use of the software, but that certain portions of the granted rights (namely distribution) are subject to restrictions. Contrary to the text, you must accept that the license contains those restrictions and notices in order to use the software. The way that licensing law works, you cannot ignore the terms ever. You cannot say that the license only comes into effect when someone wishes to distribute, because the grant of rights occurs at the time of acquisition. The limitations must apply at the same time, or they are not valid.
Everyone must accept the GPL, because the specified method of acceptance is performance (i.e., exercising your legal rights)--there is no way to use the software without accepting, regardless of the license text's badly worded "you do not need to accept to use" which really is not a license term under contract law, but a notice that end users are not subject to the restrictions.
If you did not accept the terms of the license or the various notices contained therein, you would have to not use the software at all. Any use constitutes acceptance of the terms and restrictions and acknowledgment of the notices and disclaimers.
It's not rocket science. If a license agreement says that you agree by performance, and you perform, you've agreed. If the GPL wanted to make an exception (which it doesn't, because the owner wants all non-license portions to apply), it would have to add, "Use of this software by end users does not constitute acceptance" to its assent provision.
And your post presumes that the company would find it economically feasible and sound business to bring the product to market, whether the patent was public domain or not.
The thing is that these patents are often first steps, not final steps, and NASA requires additional funding to bring any of this to market. What reason does a business have to pick up the tab if it can't exploit that investment afterward? It would serve to give a competitive edge to...competitors, which is self-defeating, particularly in the kinds of research NASA engages in.
Instead, that research is publicly funded. Whether it results in anything useful or not, the money is gone. Why shouldn't NASA be able to sell off some of that research to enable further research? Let's look at a simple example: say NASA funds a $5 million development project, turning up some patentable invention. That's just the patent. Bringing it to market costs $10 million more.
Do the taxpayers want to give NASA another $10 million (we all know the answer), or would they rather earn back $4 million and have to wait 20 years before it can be freely exploited? This way, the public is out $1 million and has to live with a patent, but it gets a useful product out of it.
The other way, the public is out $5 million, and there is no useful product. It's not perfect, but "the people" have continually balked at increasing expenditures to cover the full cost of this sort of research.
Incorrect. Copyright ONLY covers ideas.
No.
"In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea..." 17 USC 102(b).
Thanks for playing.
Excellent, you have conceded that in the absence of any law to the contrary that is the standard applied to all actions and behaviors.
No. Absence of law == anarchy.
But it is a moot point because there are five levels of law to the contrary.
Weave a rug, the rug is yours but if someone else sees the rug they have every natural right to make a rug with the same pattern.
This is independent creation and merger. It does not apply to slavish reproduction of a work, ever. Natural ability != natural right.
A lot of people on this site prefers "FSF-libre" to proprietary software because they are freer to use it for what they want/need.
And it's a great tool for that. What it is not, however, is anything appreciably like "free" in the literal sense.
The holy wars are absurd. A software license is a tool. You use the one that does what you want. "Freer for your purposes" doesn't mean "free". It is a political and polemical distinction that is disingenuous at best.
You must agree that it's closer to "true libre" than proprietary offerings.
No, I must not, because it is not. It depends entirely on who you are and what you want it to do. It releases some restrictions while imposing others. A certain community may view it as more consistent with their desires--but another may view it as less consistent with theirs.
The only licenses that are appreciably close to the "libre" definition of 'free' are the BSD-style licenses. Freedom of options means freedom for everyone.
Proprietary licenses favor creators and upstream developers, GPL licenses favor users and downstream developers. They're just different tools. There are so many licenses out there, both proprietary and open source, that anyone can maximize "freedom" for whatever they want--or create a new license to do so. To talk about one being more "free" than the other is something GPL zealots do, and wrongly. You rarely see other open source proponents with the fire and brimstone shtick. It's obnoxious, it's factually wrong, and it's counterproductive.
Copyright is not a natural or moral thing. It exists only because of law. You do not naturally or morally own an idea.
Copyright doesn't cover ideas. The rest of the analysis cannot stand when you commit so grave an error at the outset.
Because you can't stop me is natural law.
No, it's not. Natural law is a premise flowing from the essence of an act. You have a natural right to life. Because you can't physically stop someone from taking your life does not mean killing is a natural right.
"Because you can't physically stop me" is by definition the absence of law.
I'll call that bluff. Point out to me any except of the opinion that's contrary.
Here's a link: http://web2.westlaw.com/find/default.wl?fn=_top&rs=WLW8.09&rp=%2Ffind%2Fdefault.wl&mt=NewLitigator&vr=2.0&sv=Split&cite=535+F.3d+1373
If you've got the authority to make such a claim, this link should open right up for you. Since, however, you are clearly both not a lawyer and utterly wrong, I guess this settles it.
I write a poem. I hand you the poem. By default, there are no natural or moral restrictions on what you can do with that material.
No. You're glossing over the part where copyright engages. You write a poem. It is entirely yours to control. By default, there are no natural or moral restrictions on what you can do with the material, having created it yourself.
Now you come to the "handing" off. What are you surrendering? Certainly not authorship or attribution, artist's rights that always remain with the work. Are you handing off ownership? Sometimes. Are you providing it conditionally? Almost always.
"Because you can't physically stop me" is never a justification for an act in a society. I do not subscribe to your view that a creator has no natural right to his creations. It's textbook cognitive dissonance.
If Copyright law does not impose a restriction upon what you would like to do with the material, then you retain your natural right to do whatever that may be.
This applies to the author, in whose body is vested a full set of rights.
"Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following" 17 USC 106.
In other words, if it's not prohibited in 107 et seq., the copyright holder can do it. That includes authorizing reproduction, performance, and distribution with whatever limits the copyright holder chooses to enact, barring independent illegality. The copyright holder can choose to do so in the form of an abdication of copyright (public domain), a blanket grant of certain rights (license grant), a grant of certain rights for certain purposes (limited license grant), a grant of rights in exchange for a return promise by the licensee (a license agreement), or a sale or transfer of those rights to a third party (assignment).
If there is no EULA, there can be no restrictions beyond those imposed by copyright law because an end-user is under no obligation to enter into an agreement with the copyright holder to exercise rights they already have.
This is correct, if the author chooses not to impose additional or different license terms. But in the case of most software, the authorization comes in the form of a conditional grant, without which, you have no rights to the work whatsoever.
Katzer had nothing to do with the structure and means of enforcement of open source license arrangements?
I'm sorry, I must have stepped in a strange parallel universe.
So you're obviously trolling or ignorant and have never read the GPL. It's a distribution license, not a use license.
And you've never been to law school. A distribution license is a use license.
"Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted"
Did you read that? Each one is a use of an exclusive right. By excluding "running" from any restrictions, they are providing you with the terms of the license: an unrestricted license to run, and restricted licenses to copy, modify, and distribute.
Several courts have completely disagreed with you, by the way.
No, not at all. In fact, we just had Katzer to validate everything I just said. Your confusion notwithstanding, this is all relatively straightforward.
That is completely wrong.
Copyrights do not become binding when the user agrees to it. Copyrights are binding the moment the author puts the copyright on the work.
Nobody is talking about when the copyright becomes binding. You appear to have missed something in your rush to declare someone wrong.
You don't need to agree to anything to maintain your rights under copyright.
You need to agree that the GPL, which came with the product, does not give you a right to distribute, even though distribution is one of the rights granted.
The GPL explicitly states this and your freedom to not accept the license and continue using the product. A developer cannot sue you for simply using a GPLed program without accepting the license.
He can't sue you because he's granted you the license. You are not free to refuse the text of the license--it provides notice to you of essential terms: warranty disclaimers, limitation of liability, notice of no right to distribute.
If you want to distribute, though, you need to agree to the terms of the license because these rights aren't given to you under copyright law.
Your agreement is based on your use of the software. It says so explicitly. You are not free to ignore the license at any time after downloading the software.
If you could ignore it, it would not be enforceable. There is a difference between not being restricted and not being applicable, and it's one you don't seem to be getting.
Finally, EULAs in general don't "grant rights ... based on the exclusive rights held by a copyright holder." They only enact restrictions on the rights of the purchaser.
No, because a SLA is the only way the seller is willing to convey the work to you. Let's take a look.
"Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:" 17 USC 106.
To do and to authorize. In whatever form they elect to do so.
In other words, if it's not prohibited in 107 et seq., the copyright holder can do it. That includes authorizing reproduction, performance, and distribution with whatever limits the copyright holder chooses to enact, barring independent illegality. The copyright holder can choose to do so in the form of an abdication of copyright (public domain), a blanket grant of certain rights (license grant), a grant of certain rights for certain purposes (limited license grant), a grant of rights in exchange for a return promise by the licensee (a license agreement), or a sale or transfer of those rights to a third party (assignment).
If there is any right being granted on the condition of a return promise, then it is an agreement. Full stop.
If the authors of the GPL wished to grant a pure license, there would be a separate document containing a separate grant of the distribution right. By including them in a whole, the entire grant then becomes subject to the agreement of the restriction--if no agreement is required, then the document grants the right of distribution, and, having no return promise, the copyright owner cannot compel contribution of source code. That the restriction only applies in a certain circumstance is immaterial. All users must agree not to distribute without sharing source code, whether they intend to distribute or not, because it is part of the conveyance.
And I just assumed that you have a copyright system in the US because congress chose to use that power.
No, we had a copyright system in the US long before Congress existed. We also have a copyright system in this country independent of federal law, and if Congress were to stop using that power, the states would codify common law copyright. Of course, Congress is legally obligated to maintain the system as a signatory of Berne.
As such, it looks to me like a congressional decision, not an administrative one.
Again, please refer back to my previous post. The only free speech ramification pertains to the subject of independent creation and is an administrative (and judicial) creation, not a Congressional one.
Now, when we talk about distribution, the accuracy of "free" is more dubious.
And therein lies the problem. Gratis is pointless--there are plenty of gratis proprietary titles.
Oh, you tickle me so. 17 USC is a copyright license; it establishes conditions under which a copyright holder cannot sue--in other words, statutory license.
Further, 17 USC 117(a) doesn't establish legal possession of a copy or a license of copyright, but only that one who already HAS legal possession is not guilty of infringement by copying it into RAM. It has no bearing on whether you have permission to use the work in the first place, which is the issue here.
This addition was a direct response to court decisions holding that software could not be copied to and from memory under the default statutory scheme. It was passed in the early 80s, when computers were new and judges uncertain where the future was heading.
Yes, exactly.
Yes. You've just declared the GPL unenforceable.
So I don't have to contribute code, because I've already got a license, with no terms that I had to agree to, and you've said it's not binding anyway, so I've got the grant without the restrictions, because you can't impose restrictions on a grant, except in scope, unless you have an agreement.
This really isn't rocket science.
No, it's stated: "Acceptance Not Required for Having Copies.
It can say whatever it wants. That doesn't change what it is. If you do not accept that your right to distribution is limited, you have no license.
If you have to agree to do something in exchange for a right, it is an agreement.
That sentence is simply to inform you that you have no obligations as a user--not that you haven't assented to the license agreement. It's badly worded and utterly ignorant of licensing law
If I sell (or give away) a product with no warranty, I don't require the user to agree.
You most certainly do. You state your terms, and by going through with the transaction, they've agreed to be bound by them.
If they did not agree, then you can't enforce those terms against them, and you then can be sued for breach of warranty.
This is why I said would not otherwise be allowed.
You miss the essential point: copyright law is what makes these possible. Copyright law must be open to modification in order to make the GPL possible.
That is just what the GPL does. This isn't want an EULA does (at least, the ones that people criticise).
Neither the GPL nor a "EULA" does anything different from the other. Both grant rights and enact restrictions based on the exclusive rights held by a copyright holder. The copyright holder is under no obligation to surrender any portion of those rights to you, except under the terms they provide, with a few caveats. If you'd care to submit a provision from a EULA that isn't a restriction on scope and that you find objectionable, I'd be happy to discuss it.
congress limited free speech with regards to copyright.
No, Congress did no such thing, because free speech has never covered appropriation of the speech of others. The only such restriction is an administrative, not Congressional, one, and it pertains to the intricacies of independent creation.
Most people do mean "free as in speech".
They can't, because then there is no distinction between "free" and proprietary software.
Developers are "free as in speech" to release their work in whatever form they want. "Free" software has limits on it too--just different limits.
"Free as in speech" is a reference to the concept of liberty, but it's a faulty one, because they're not opening up--they're doing so in exchange for something, which is neither gratis nor libre.
The GPL is not binding, nor is it an agreement.
If it's not binding, it's not enforceable. If it's not an agreement, then you have the full right to use, modify, and distribute as per the license grant--since you never agreed to perform a return act in consideration for those rights.
You are free to ignore it.
I believe the FSF and the courts disagree. Moreover, the developers disagree--if you can ignore it, you can ignore the limitation of liability and the warranty disclaimer.
The GPL does not - rather, it grants extra freedoms (which, incidentally, is where the word "free" comes in) that wouldn't otherwise be allowed under copyright law.
Nonsense. Under copyright law, on a daily basis, I negotiate and grant distribution rights to licensees. Under copyright law, I draft letters about GPL enforcement. Under copyright law, copyright holders are allowed to sell or license however much of their work they wish to.
Once one legally acquires software, one is legally allowed to use it as per the terms of copyright laws in most countries. Permission from the vendor is not required.
You're begging the question. Permission from the vendor is required to "legally acquire" the software. If that permission is conditional, based on what they have decided to sell, then you're right back here.
*ALL* contracts cover things which are not present or required by statutory law. By definition, that is why they exist.
This is not a right the vendor is legally able to extend under the copyright act.
Citation needed. You won't find one.
The Copyright Act specifies what both customers and owners can't do. If it's not prohibited by the Act or independently barred by some other law, it's valid. This is why no court has ever--EVER--dismissed a case or claim based solely on the fact that it existed in the form of a license agreement.
they must engage in a legally binding contract with the recipient prior to sale or transmission.
You do not need to accept terms in order to buy a box. You can purchase or otherwise legally acquire a package without having intent to use it, whether as a gift or simply for its physical components or aesthetic appeal.
Only the user asserts any rights under copyright, and only the user must accept the conditions of that use. We just had, barely a few months ago, a grounded court decision on the Artistic License--that it was enforceable just as any other software license. You don't get one without the other.
If it didn't cover use, you wouldn't be able to use it. All the warranty and liability sections and everything else applies to use just as much as it does to distribution.
GPL'd software is copyrighted software. You do not have the right to possess, perform, reproduce, modify, distribute, or display copyrighted works without acquiring such rights from the copyright holder. The GPL is what gives you those rights and so it by definition must cover use. That it imposes no particular restrictions or requirements (beyond your acceptance of no owner liability and no warranty of any kind) is in itself significant.
You do understand that free speech works exactly as you describe here?
Not the way the Slashdot crowd understands it and distorts it. After all, any mention of the word copyright is bound to be followed up by some prattling buffoon saying that copyright restricts "free speech" (it doesn't) because it prevents you from "speaking" a certain sequence of characters (it doesn't) or prevents you from using that knowledge (it doesn't).
Slashdot never refers to free speech as it actually exists in law, but rather as it exists in their heads, where anything they can do is something they should have a right to do.
Free beer and free speech are simple analogies, but be careful about nit-picking with them.
I'll stop when they stop distorting the law.
If they're going to insist that "free speech" means "freedom to copy and distribute at will", then I'm going to hold them to it. GPL included. This is the consequence of their collective disingenuity.
when people discuss free software in the open source sense they mean free as in speech.
No they don't.
If they did, it would be released into the public domain. Instead, it is copyrighted, with the restrictions in place relating to what that particular community thinks is an acceptable "price" for use, modification, and distribution rights. Sometimes it's truly free, like that users can do what they want in terms of using GPL software, but other times, it's not, like when you want to assert a right to distribution.
The major function of a EULA is notice. The license grant and restrictions is one or two sections of a greater document. The whole notion of a 'EULA' in general is an attempt to draw a false distinction between some kinds of SLAs and others, and to give the peanut gallery a chance to mangle semantics of utterly zero legal significance. They're all essentially the same. They all take the same form and become binding the same way. Yes, even the GPL. It's a fairly standard structure: recitals, definitions, license grant, license restriction, term and termination, warranty, liability, litigation provisions, and miscellaneous (trademark/patent license terms, export terms, international law issues, etc.).
They differ only in content and the nature of the restrictions. They're all license agreements. A license is just the grant and term. What an "end user" is or whether that's the scope of the license is up to the particular agreement, and people are entirely too sloppy with their use of the term 'EULA'--to the point that it is meaningless.
All of this is to say nothing about the obvious difference between the license on the use of the source code and the license on the use of the branded binary, which are two separate products.
Privacy advocates are more than welcome to refuse to send pictures or videos.
They are also welcome to decline to call 911 at all, since doing so would give away their location, along with some valuable personal information they do not wish to disclose, such as the fact that their home was currently being broken into.
Who knows what strangers would do with all that information!
After the initial novelty wears off, I can't imagine "people thinking it is funny" being a worse problem than any other means of "pranking" emergency services. The population of 911-abusers is still the same size; this just gives them more tools for their mischief.
That will greatly reduce the demand for lawyers and .... um .... nevermind.
No, it wouldn't. "Loser pays" just changes who writes the checks, not whether the costs are covered.
But more importantly, the reason is that "loser pays" only stops those people in the middle zone of plausibility from risking legal action. The people making the egregious, psychotic claims are either too delusional to realize their folly, or they have some other objective. Either way, the idea of them eating the costs either doesn't occur to them or doesn't matter, so loser pays only punishes those people with reasonably good cases that just didn't break their way.
The knife's edge cases are important, because they help define the elusive boundaries of the law, and by doing so, are the main engines of change in established law. You move the mountain one boulder at a time. Loser pays makes legitimate people afraid to take on legal teams that dwarf their own financial resources (like, I don't know, large telecom corporations) due to risk of financial obliteration when handed the corporation's bill.
We already have a mechanism for an award for fees and costs where appropriate.
Video chat.
Video blogging (including those idiotic Youtube "response" videos).
Personal grooming without a mirror.
Quick photos (for example, showing your friends a funny wine label without having to find a digital camera, sync it, and then resize the giant 5-8MP image to send via the web).
Barcode scanning (for Delicious Library, etc.).
Profile photos for social networking and the like.
There are plenty of uses. Not all of them apply to everyone, and certainly not all of them are listed here.
No, statutory copyright has always been at least 28 years (14+14), since 1709, when it coincided roughly with the expected length of an artist's career. It was subsequently extended as life expectancy increased, artists began working earlier with the fall of apprenticeships, adjustments to bring back some of the more expansive common law copyright terms, and ultimately as part of a larger sophomore effort in the US to protect assets and pass them on to future generations.
There has never been a 14-year limit on copyright. Common law copyright, further, had much longer terms of protection (but in some cases narrower in scope).
The US incentive-based rationale has bent from global pressure in artists' rights societies (including the EU) to extend copyright to what has become the global expectation. Even within the United States, copyright was always intended to ensure than any profitability of a work would be under the author's control. Copyright terms that are too short allow third parties to come in and profit directly from a work--anathema to artists' rights, and clearly in violation of the spirit of an economic incentive rationale.
Revert to 28-year copyrights and you'll see staggered release, withholding of production, and lower expenditures on the more expensive works. Keep in mind that a commercially successful work must not only pay for itself, but also for the commercial failures, which require time, money, and effort, too. Back when copyrights were shorter, there was nothing so costly as a motion picture or a major software title.
If the concern is record profits for a few firms at the top, it's unfair to single out one industry for that. It's a problem that must be dealt with in e.g., tax law. If the concern is greed and abuse by the record labels, which is certainly reprehensible, then it must be dealt with by dealing with the businesses. With the exception of the CTEA, prior copyright extensions were based on the beliefs of the international community and a focus on the artist's use of his works. The CTEA was purely economic pressure, but it is consistent with European terms.
The term of copyright has very little impact on new works of art. There is no appreciable shortage as it is, and no requirement that an artist use the full term of protection.
Ah, so you're a PUMA then?
No, but since Obama supporters like you are now making him the candidate of "if you point out any error or inconsistency, my supporters will ignorantly accuse you of being an enemy operative", maybe it's not such a bad idea.
No, that's a lie. Obama never committed to public financing.
The hell he didn't. He's the one who brought it up as an issue. He made it a point of contention with Hillary Clinton, and then turned it on the Republicans. He made the proposal in response to the other candidates hedging on the issue--only to hedge himself, and flat out walk away from his own proposal. He allowed the media to talk about his pledge, his plan, and his commitment while it suited him and was working in his favor. Then he lied about his reason for not taking the money.
Since the option he took has even fewer restrictions and no need for loopholes, he can't complain about a "broken" public fund. It's not broken, except that you can bypass the requirements and limitations by opting out. Since that's exactly what he did, though, it's no protest.
http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/content/Questionnaire_Midwest_Democracy_Network_Obama_02192008.pdf
"I proposed a novel way to preserve the strength of the public financing system in the 2008 election. My plan requires both major party candidates to agree on a fundraising truce, return excess money from donors, and stay within the public financing system for the general election. My proposal followed announcements by some presidential candidates that they would forgo public financing so they could raise unlimited funds in the general election." He made the proposal. HE was the one who made the issue into a campaign issue. He walked away, paying little more than lip service to the idea.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/04/11/obama-blurs-his-pledge-on-public-financing/
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1014824,public061908.article
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/us/politics/02fec.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/06/obama-to-break.html
And now you're saying that a pledge and a commitment isn't a promise. Where is this candidate of change and new politics, exactly? He looks exactly like all the other ones.
Tapper, an Obama supporter, summed it up perfectly: "Declaring independence from a "broken system" by breaking a promise. Obama hopes you'll care more about the former than the latter."
As a liberal, it's the latter that matters, especially when the former is largely a lie. A liberal who tolerates this is no liberal at all, but rather an ideologue trapped by a cult of personality, and unfortunately the Democrats are joining the Republicans in that growing population.