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Re: fortunes with quotes from movies such as 'The Matrix' etc.

What is not highly visible to most is that Hollywood and book publishers have large rights clearance infrastructures. Moreover, the threat of mutual copyright destruction is strong among these established organizations i.e. you sue me for copyright infringement, I may or probably will counterclaim against you for copyright infringement.
I appreciate your pragmatic and political concerns but it should be noted that strong fair use rights are primarily a U.S. concept. Fair use rights elsewhere in the world are pretty weak (even non-existent). Operating through the Internet potentially puts all these others laws into play.
Also consider this case from this "Pathetic Republic of Greater Stupidity" - New York City: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=search&case=/data2/circs/2nd/977992.html
BTW, many would consider the Second Circuit probably the 2nd most respected and precedential court in the U.S. with respect to copyright matters (only behind the U.S. Supreme Court) - if that means anything.... 


From: Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org>
To: Viral <viral@debian.org>
CC: debian-legal@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: fortunes with quotes from movies such as 'The Matrix' etc.
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 23:58:11 -0700

On Tue, May 01, 2001 at 10:26:53AM +0530, Viral wrote:
> I followed the previous thread from the archives of debian-legal last year 
> for including fortune packages with quotes from movies etc.
>
> I understand, that this would be considered as Fair Use, as long as
> it is correctly attributed. However because of inclusion in the archives, 
> CDs can be sold for profit, which makes matters complicated.
>
> So, if it is included in the non-free section, would it be ok ? The quotes 
> are included not for the sole purpose of profit, but with accompanying
> software and packages.

Ugh, people have been making profits indirectly off of fair-use quotations
for years.  If Hollywood and every book publisher known to man can do it
legally, why the hell can't we?

I realize that most people are worried about sue-happy corporate America
trying to hunt them down wherever they are in the entire world.  But c'mon
people, at the rate we're going Debian itself will be declared non-free
simply because the lot of us have become a bunch of cowards afraid to
stand up for our principles.

If we are going to not do everything that could possibly somewhere be
considered illegal under some bizarre interpretation of the laws of the
Pathetic Republic of Greater Stupidity (insert random country here), then
we may as well all give up and go back to using proprietary software.


First crypto, then mp3, then CSS modules, now the Linux kernel and the
fortune databases?  Debian's trademark caution seems to be taking a back
seat to rampant paranoia taken to the extreme of idiocy.  I'm waiting for
some highly intelligent idiot to demand that gdb be moved to non-free
since it can be used as a circumvention device under the DMCA and similar
ridiculous laws popping up in other countries whose leaders appear to have
risen from the shallow end of the gene pool.


> Basically, can one include fortune-matrix etc. in any part of the debian
> archive today, without bothering about legal trouble.

If there is legal trouble to be had by distributing fortunes-matrix in
main, then there are also problems with every other fortune database
Debian has, plus dict-wn, and probably a large collection of other things.
Attributed quotations are fair use, it's as simple as that regardless of
what the MPAA, RIAA, CBAA, XYZZY, and anyone else for that matter would
like you to believe.

--
Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org>                Free software developer

<KnaraKat> Bite me.
* TheOne gets some salt, then proceeds to nibble on KnaraKat a little
         bit....

<< attach3 >>


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