Re: Web application licenses
Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org> writes:
> Brian Thomas Sniffen writes:
>
>> But in your model, am I performing the MUA, the MTA, the network
>> stack, libc, the firewall, the NAT software, the routers in between,
>> Spamassassin on your side, the mailing list manager, your MTA, MDA, or
>> MUA? All of them?
>
> You perform the MUA, MTA, network stack, libc and anything else you
> cause to run on your side. You sending mail would be private
> performance of those, because you both operate and invoke the
> software, and so you would not be bound by restrictions on their
> public performance. I would be publicly performing the MTA on my end
> for you when my MTA accepts mail from you. Execution of my mail
> filters, MDA and MUA are private performance on my part.
But there's no creativity in my execution of that code -- only what
was originally there. That is, since a computer program is partly
creative expression of an idea, and partly a functional device,
copyright law protects the former but not the latter. So in executing
the code, I'm not interacting with the creative expression at all: I'm
using it, not performing it.
That's no more a public performance than driving a well-designed
sports car is a public performance of its design.
>> > I do not see how altering the data in transit is pertinent. Are you
>> > arguing that because some application uses IPv4, it can be encumbered
>> > by a copyright license on code running on a router, or vice versa?
>>
>> No, but surely the person running the router is performing its code,
>> in your model. And if the router alters data in transit, then it
>> creates a derivative work as it passes the packets along, right?
>> Surely, then, the license on that alteration matters.
>
> Yes, the person operating the router is publicly performing the
> router's code. However, because mechanical transformations are not
> derivative works under copyright law, and because communications
> providers are allowed to forward data on request[1], the router's
> forwarding actions do not infringe any copyright on either the data or
> programs that generate the data.
I wasn't talking about a purely mechanical transformation -- consider
that I replace one out of every thousand packets with my own poetry.
The license on the poetry then does matter.
I suspect you may misunderstand the way in which "mechanical
transformations are not derivative works" -- it's not that there's no
copyright on the work after it's been transformed, but rather that
it's exactly the same copyright as before transformation.
> [1]- 17 USC 111(a)(3), plus any implicit permission from originator.
>
> Michael Poole
--
Brian Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu
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