Re: Results for Debian's Position on the GFDL

[Adam McKenna <adam@flounder.net>]

On Fri, Mar 17, 2006 at 03:07:05PM -0500, Michael Poole wrote:
> Adam McKenna writes:
> 
> > On Fri, Mar 17, 2006 at 02:29:18PM -0500, Michael Poole wrote:
> > > So is it acceptable for the GFDL to prohibit me from performing these
> > > two operations:
> > > 
> > >   cp some-gfdl-licensed-document.txt ~/local-copy.txt
> > >   chmod 0700 ~/local-copy.txt
> > 
> > How do those two operations prevent you from making further copies of the
> > file and distributing them?
> 
> Prevent me, as the file owner?  They don't.  However, they do obstruct
> or control the further reading and copying of the work.

Not in the context of copyright law, as Raul already pointed out.

Carrying your argument even further, you could say that a copy that rests on
any controlled-access machine would also violate the license (which would
mean, basically, every copy).  That doesn't make sense.  The requirement is
that people who obtain copies of the file are not, themselves, obstructed 
from further distribution.

--Adam