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Re: RES: What makes software copyrightable anyway?



On 5/13/05, Adam McKenna <adam@flounder.net> wrote:
> On Fri, May 13, 2005 at 02:47:37PM -0400, Raul Miller wrote:
> > > We have a license to distribute said material and we are abiding by the terms
> > > of the license.  You might as well say that book publishers are contributing
> > > to infringement because books are so easy to photocopy.
> >
> > Except book publishers have hundreds of years of track record where
> > books were not easy to photocopy.   So it's hard to see how you can
> > draw this analogy.  What did book publishers do, recently, that they
> > weren't doing before, that made books easy to photocopy?
> >
> > Also, Napster wasn't distributing anything in violation of any copyright
> > licenses, so I don't see how this argument of yours shows that that
> > analogy is irrelevant.
> 
> But we are more like a book publisher than Napster.  We have a license to
> publish certain materials, and we do so.  What the user does with the
> materials after they receive them legally from us is both none of our
> business and out of our control.

Are you claiming that we have a license to distribute the work based
on the program Quagga which also contains and uses openssl?

If not, what are we discussing?

> If we were adding pointers to 'illegal' packages that random users have
> built to our web site, then you might be able to draw a comparison to
> Napster.  But we aren't (as far as I know).

I'm not trying to claim that our case is identical to Napster.

I'm trying to use Napster to show that we can't always divorce 
ourselves from actions our users take.

As I understand it, action at distance is not sufficient
to absolve us of responsibility.

-- 
Raul



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