Re: Freedom to modify other literary work, was: [...GFDL...] documentation eq software ?
Mathieu Roy <yeupou@gnu.org> writes:
>> > If someone explains you what is free software, do you need to be
>> > granted to reuse his speech? You don't: if you understand him, you can
>> > regive his speech at the infinite.
>>
>> If I want to actually "reuse his speech" in either the sense of a
>> recording or his exact wording, then techically I do need to be
>> granted that permission. I can give my own speech based on the ideas
>> (normally), but I cannot regive his speech.
>>
>> > If we were about to make a license for everything, speeches would be
>> > licensed too...
>>
>> Ah, but they are. Go look at the licences on
>
> As you said previously, here it's recording, with the real voices of
> the persons.
> Hopefully it's licensed: laws forbid you to record someone who is not
> aware of it, it seems normal to me.
That is not universally true: in much of the USA, only one party to a
conversation needs to consent to recording. It's a complicated issue
which cannot be simply explained here.
> But as you said, you "I can give my own speech based on the ideas",
> and so you "can regive his speech" (you can use the exact same wording
> if you want).
Not if he's written the words of the speech down, or recorded it: if
he did, he owns copyright on that expression of the ideas -- that
wording -- as soon as it was in fixed, tangible form.
You might find USC 17 interesting reading, or the last 30 months of
Debian-Legal traffic.
> And as you noticed, the important point is to be able to regive the
> ideas. Which is already possible with any book.
There are so many cases where that isn't true it's not even worth
listing them all. Yes, in general, copyright law should not inhibit
the propagation of ideas.
-Brian
--
Brian T. Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu
http://www.evenmere.org/~bts/
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