On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 09:17:39PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote: > HOWEVER, I find it worrying that the legal venue is stated as > > | This license is governed by the Laws of the State of Texas and any > | disputes shall be decided by mediation. > > Does this mean that the user has to submit to some unspecified > "mediation" and waive his right to have a real court interpret the > license in case of trouble? If so, it doesn't seem free. I agree. A pure copyright license (as opposed to one that attempts to restrict activities that are not exclusive rights of copyright holders, such as criticism of the producer of the software) does not need, and cannot use, any such choice-of-law provision, as one must bring copyright infringement suits in federal court, not state court. This is because the power to pass and enforce copyright legislation is reserved to the federal government under the U.S. Constitution. As for international changes-of-venue, what country is going to cede its jurisdiction over its own copyright laws to some other country? -- G. Branden Robinson | It just seems to me that you are Debian GNU/Linux | willfully entering an arse-kicking branden@debian.org | contest with a monstrous entity http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | that has sixteen legs and no arse.
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