Matthew Garrett wrote:
Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> wrote:For this reason, Debian should reject choice of venue clauses as non-free. At best, they give an underdog copyright holder a small advantage while enforcing his rights, but at worst they give a hostile copyright holder a large advantage while persecuting the Free Software community.I'm not convinced that the advantage to the copyright holder is small. If a large US corporation violates my copyright license, I'm likely to stand a significantly better chance if I can sue them in the UK. To some extent, I think it comes down to intent - if people are introducing these clauses with the desire to restrict people's behaviour above and beyond the terms of the license, then that's non-free. If they're doing it in order to make it easier to enforce the terms of the license, then I think the situation is less clear.
If a large US corporation violates your copyright, you can choose where to file your claim. You can sue in any jurisdiction where the injury is done, and where the party has a presence. There are very few large US corporations that do not have a presence in the UK.
The first thing you might have to do in such a lawsuit could be to prove that the UK is an appropriate place to sue them, but that would be the case anywhere.
On the other hand, if you have a choice of venue clause in your license, then the first thing you might have to do in such a lawsuit could be to prove that the large US corporation is bound by the license to have accepted the choice of venue. If I were a large corporate lawyer (or any type of lawyer) the first thing I'd do with such a suit is try to confuse where it should be filed: the COV clause assumes a valid license, we don't agree that the license is valid, so why are we bound by the COV?
--Joe