[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: copyright law vs. license text (Was: Honesty in Debian)



-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Daniel Ruoso wrote:
> Em Sáb, 2006-02-11 às 13:46 -0500, Nathanael Nerode escreveu:
> 
> I have one single question... Does copyright law even applies to legal
> agreements and license terms? I'm pretty sure noone can be sued for
> using the terms someone used earlier, or even a modified version (as
> long as one doesn't pretend the modified version is the original), or
> even distributing it with some product...
> 
IANAL .... *but* if you've ever seen those legal will kits and so on,
they have a copyright on the text of the agreement.  Also, having read
the copyright info packages from the Canadian government (guess where I
live :-), it is clear that a copyright applies to pretty much any work,
and since a legal agreement is a document (work) it can be coprighted.

The law AFAIK makes no distinction between works made by lawyers and
works made by other writers.  I forget though who owns public court
records (I think it's the gov't but I'm not at all sure of that; I do
know there is a fee to obtain a copy, in any form).

I do know that some shrink-wrap licenses have clauses regarding
licensing of the license itself (generally just as restrictive as the
rest of the license for to the software).

Cheers,

Daniel
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFD8UhueVDHer2Nu1QRArqVAJoDz8F+tXbUk6RGSGQaYwUmQchRbACdG8KJ
ewbtUyKrchViPEdcaRD3C34=
=j5Do
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



Reply to: