Re: RFC: GPL plus securities industry disclaimer suitable for main?
Fedor Zuev wrote:
> AFAIK, you are right in general, but there a small
> correction needed. I apologize, if you cite any official source, but
> all I read about this appears slightly otherwise. Copyright holder
> cannot grant "right for as yet unknown types of use", not the "right
> for distribution over yet unknown channels".
"use" means "making copies", "distribution", "public performance" etc.
The terminology in this area leaves something to be desired.
Activities such as reading or viewing individual copies are not called
"use" in this context, they are beyond copyright law. This is even true
for running software, except that the law states that copies created
during the normal act of running the software are not a copyright
violation.
> So, if newly discovered channel does not add anything new to
> the manner of exploitation of work itself, it should not be
> considered as new type of use.
Online distribution clearly falls in this category (it's not
fundamentally different from previous distribution methods, after all),
*but* the legal community does not agree with us.
I would have expected that things as remote as telepathy or holographic
replication would be considered new forms exploitation, and I argued
that separate online distribution rights do more harm than good
(admittedly after reading Epstein's book on the book business, which
mentions this point quite explicitly), but of course, it didn't make a
difference.
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