On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 15:12:41 -0500 Nathanael Nerode wrote: > >1) Some sort of identification of the author of the work is required > >in order to allow people to exercise their DFSG guaranteed freedoms > >upon a work. > > Yes. > > I do not think we should commit to protect *anonymous* authorship per > se, because it does raise legal problems for getting a valid license. Why? What legal problems would be raised, if someone (we will never know who) sends the source code for a work to a mailing list through an anonymous remailer chain, with the following copyright notice? | Copyright (c) 2005 Anonymous | | Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining | a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the | "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including | without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, | distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to | permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to | the following conditions: | | The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be | included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. | | THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, | EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF | MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. | IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY | CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, | TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE | SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. Since this is an Expat license, we already have a valid license. What other legal problems would be there? > > I instead think we should commit to protecting *pseudonymous* > authorship, with real identity kept secret. A dissident (or several > dissidents) could call him/her/themself "RevolutionaryNumberNine", > keep his/her real identity secret, and carry out entirely proper > copyright and license management. I believe pseudonymous copyright is > supported explicitly by US law, at least. I would think that it holds in many other jurisdictions, since writing novels and poems under a pseudonym is a long established practice in literature... > (The psedonymous person > could even have a contact email address routed through one of those > Scandanavian anonymizers, if necessary.) I hope you're not referring to obsolete and insecure penet (pseudo-)anonymous remailers (i.e. type 0 anonymous remailers). Using a (newnym) nym server is far better, though not as secure as current state-of-the-art anonymity levels. Once type-III-remailer-based nym servers are available, the situation will improve significantly... > > The problem of the pseudonymous person contributing code which is not > theirs to contribute applies, in practice, equally well to named and > fully identified persons (unfortnately), so is not an argument against > this. :-( Indeed. And I think that the difference between these two cases and the completely anonymous one is not really meaningful from this point of view... -- Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. ...................................................................... Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4
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