Re: Some licensing questions regarding celestia
Quoting Don Armstrong (don@donarmstrong.com):
> I'm at a loss to find where copyright law specifies the terms and
> forms of an agreement or license.
(Note: "Agreement" is your addition to this discussion, part of your
attempt to change the subject to contract law. I spoke nowhere of
"agreements".)
Assuming we're talking about USA jurisdictions: 17 USC 106 et seq.
enumerates rights reserved to copyright owners by default. Others are
conveyed automatically to any lawful recipient of a covered work -- the
default licence implicit in copyright law. (The fact that the word
"licence" doesn't appear in the Copyright Act is entirely irrelevant to
the subject.)
GPLv2 is an example of a grant of some of those reserved rights subject
to specified conditions, above and beyond the default rights conveyed.
The BSD licence is another.
> See other messages in this thread in regards to consideration.
I've been seeing them for many years, ad nauseum. Whether valid
consideration exists sounds open to question.
> [I'm not all together sure why privity would play a role....
Why am I not surprised?
If you are asserting that licences must apply through contract
mechanisms (which is what I understand to be your -- tediously familiar
from past iterations of this discussion -- argument), then privity of
contract between the licensor and third-hand recipients becomes a
problem. You might be able to build a case that those downloading the
tarball directly from the author's site undergo the required offer &
acceptance, but further uploads and downloads entail no such
relationship between recipient and licensor.
>>> Licenses obey the forms of either a contract or a lease or they are
>>> not legally valid.
>>
>> That is false. Please read, for example, GNU GPLv2.
>
> It has been argued that the GPL follows the forms of a legal
> agreement, or contract between two parties.
Do I correctly understand that you are incapable of understanding the
plain language of GPLv2 clause 0?
The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and
a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any
derivative work under copyright law:
> If it doesn't, from which common law cases or statute does it draw its
> legal authority?
In the USA, 17 USC 101 et seq. (Copyright Act).
--
Cheers, Ever wonder why the _same people_
Rick Moen make up _all_ the conspiracy theories?
rick@linuxmafia.com
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