Matt Zimmerman [mdz@debian.org] wrote:
> (I am not a lawyer)
Neither am I. ;) Free software needs some lawyers, darnit. But then
again...
> On Fri, Mar 09, 2001 at 01:03:53AM -0600, Bob McElrath wrote:
>
> > My license is intended to accomplish 3 things:
> > 1) Make copyright compliance of the filtered HTML the responsibility of
> > the person *running* it, not mine. (I don't want to be sued, and I
> > think this is reasonable -- see license for further justification)
>
> Isn't it usually the case that the user is responsible for their actions?
Not in the US of A. But that's another rant... If Napster can be held
responsible for the actions of its users... "contributory infringement"
and all that...
> Even if not, couldn't this be replaced by a statement similar to the
> one you make above? Rather than stating that the user cannot do X or
> Y, state that the user shall assume responsibility for their use of
> the software.
Well, that *is* the statement in the license:
Any content modified by FilterProxy shall be considered to be the
sole legal responsibility of the individual or corporation who runs
FilterProxy. In no case shall any author of FilterProxy, or any
author of a filtering component be held liable for copyright,
patent, or other Intellectual Property law compliance of downloaded
content.
> > 3) Explicitly disallow redistribution of modified HTML. While the
> > source is always readily available in this case, modifying it for
> > redistribution is out of the question, since the HTML may not have
> > been obtained under some kind of "open content" license. Personal
> > use, by anyone, anywhere, for any purpose, is fine.
>
> How is FilterProxy, in this case, any different than, say, a text editor?
> Emacs doesn't have restrictions on its license stating that you cannot edit and
> redistribute copyrighted works with it; that is covered by other law. Isn't
> this also the case for web content?
The distinction is that in using a proxy, the modification is automatic
and transparent. Imagine that an ISP installs FilterProxy to
transparently filter all content downloaded by its users. Then CNN (or
some other website) takes offense at its content being modified (CNN's
copyright being violated).
While you can violate copyrights with a text editor just as easily, the
text editor does not automatically transmit modified copies to hundreds
of people. If it did, it might be argued that the software was at
fault, and by extension, its author.
Perhaps I shouldn't have included point #3 above, since the license
doesn't actually do this. It just makes the whole thing the user's
responsibility. The "without their express knowledge and consent"
clause prevents misrepresentation of modified stuff as the original.
Again, the license is the indented part, not the rest. License is here:
http://draal.physics.wisc.edu/FilterProxy/LICENSE
> > Well, if you can...but what would flying pig taste like?
> >
> > Seriously, I think section 6 is ambiguous in this regard. Would Debian allow
> > a software that, while free, prevented you from installing or compiling
> > modified versions of key software? For FilterProxy, What about HTML
> > documentation that is distributed under a Open Documentation license? If
> > FilterProxy touched the HTML, it could be violating the license the
> > documentation is distributed under.
>
> Again, is it the job of FilterProxy's license to enforce this, when it is
> already covered by the license of the original document? Never mind that it's
> quite unreasonable for anyone to try to verify the copyright/licensing status
> of a WWW document before viewing it.
The idea is that FilterProxy could violate the licencing/copyright of a
WWW document, via modification and redistribution. By making this the
user's responsibility, I avoid having to worry about the copyright of
every single HTML document on the web.
Cheers,
-- Bob
Bob McElrath (rsmcelrath@students.wisc.edu)
Univ. of Wisconsin at Madison, Department of Physics
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