On Thu, May 05, 2005 at 10:42:02AM -0700, James William Pye wrote: > Besides that, a normal person would probably ask themselves questions > such as "Does an author have the right to read his/her own works?", well > most certainly. I think you are deeply confused as to the nature of copyright. An author only has any 'rights' until the point where he trades them away to somebody else. The author of a commercial software program will not typically have any rights to it at all. It is only by grace of his employer that he can read it. > > But it'd certainly be clearer in all of them to just say what you mean. > > When I wish to specify that there are no limits, how can I be more > specific than to say, "there are no limits"? You didn't say that. And you could be more specific by saying what isn't limited. > > Oh, and this is a big lawyer-bomb. It's fairly easy for some one (or > > his heirs, etc.) to decide to un-free the work by arguing a limited > > meaning of "the rights granted by authorship". For example, they > > could argue the only right granted by authorship is to have the work > > properly attributed, and thus that no permission to do much anything > > has really been granted. > > I really don't think so. Well, you lost that court battle. > You'd be much better off claiming your ancestor > was insane for giving away his intellectual property, and could not have > possibly understood what the license meant due to the fact that he spent > so many hard hours creating the works, and all those hard hours, for > what? For nothing! That's essentially how the argument works, yes. "That would make no sense, therefore it doesn't really mean 'all', that was a mistake, it just means some and for a limited time; they didn't intend to deprive their heirs of income. It's ours now". It's worked enough times. > > 3. Your disclaimer may not be sufficent. IANAL. However, since every > > disclaimer I have seen produced by a lawyer is much more thorough, > > I'd guess there is a good reason for that. > > Sufficient for what precisely? The only thing that I wish to make clear > with that disclaimer is that there is no guarantee. I can't think of a > more clear way to state it with regards to those works. Lawyers can. Court battles have been fought and lost over such clauses in the past. Your clause merely says that you aren't providing a warranty, this does not affect, eg, statutory rights under UK law. You're still providing the implicit warranty of merchantability, matching the description, and fitness for a given purpose, and you are liable in the limited fashion they imply. Criminally so if a mistake on your part leads to serious injury or loss of life. You'd get a reduced sentence since you only bear partial, limited responsibility, but you *would* be convicted. Leave the lawyer-wrangling to the lawyers. Non-lawyers should not be writing licenses. > > Permission is hereby granted ... to deal in the Software without > > restriction, including without limitation the rights [list of rights], > > and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, > > subject to the following conditions.... (MIT License) > > > > Notice 'without restriction' and 'including without limitation'. The > > list is there to make the license crystal clear; that is a good thing. > > It in no way limits the scope of the license grant. > > Heh, let's treat MIT in like form. > > "deal in the Software"? I haven't seen that in my readings of Berne and > title 17. No specific definition that I know of. Go buy a legal dictionary. Since you're obsessive-compulsive about US law, which is a common-law country, it's pretty much a waste of time to sit staring at the statute. Common-law countries don't have any basic principles written into the statute at all. > So what on earth do > they mean, specifically? Does that mean, I can print the material to > multiple pieces of rectangular paper and play poker with my buddies > without restriction? It's arguably vague. Sure. Who cares? It means all the stuff we care about, plus the vague lunatic stuff that you're so eager to permit. The list of permissions is legally explicit. I can't be bothered to dissect your poor cariacture; it's wrong. Law is not vague fluff, it's a specific language, and you suck at it. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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