Re: DomainKeys license(s)
On Fri, Aug 25, 2006 at 09:35:34AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
> By the way, are there still a few countries not in the Berne Union? Maybe
> copyright isn't completely cross-jurisdiction, but it seems near enough.
The only "real" country left is Taiwan, and it's mostly because the rebels
in the mainland prevent them from entering most international agreements.
Montenegro just hasn't re-signed it yet -- not a strange thing for a country
a month and a half old.
The rest consists of:
* a couple of micronations (San Marino, Marshall Islands)
With populations of 28k and 61k they don't even bother.
* fourth world countries
Mud-stick huts, no stable governments, and so on. Their third-world
neighbours like Nigeria are in, though.
* islamists (Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, ...)
They hardly ever bother with Western laws. The first two got a nudge
recently, though.
* other totalitarian ones (Myanmar, Turkmenistan, ...)
Go ahead, take your luck enforcing your copyrights there.
Taiwan does have copyright agreements with US, UK and several other
countries, so it isn't completely outside the copyright world.
So generally, for any real purpose the Berne Convention is an universal
thing.
> [...]
> > Patents on the other hand are completely jurisdiction dependant. [...]
>
> Not completely (TRIPS, WTO, bilaterals, blah) but enough to be annoying.
Yet, since most countries of the world don't recognize software patents, you
can still use software endangered by patent trolls everywhere except for the
non-free countries. A server outside the US+UK+Germany+Japan would be just
fine.
> > [...] If it is not under
> > active enforcement, and is under a free license, there is no reason not
> > to have it in main.
>
> Sounds sensible to me. Anyone knows case law well? What might happen
> if a submarine patent in main starts being actively enforced? It looks
> to me as if the usual opening move is to send a take-down notice:
> http://swpat.ffii.org/pikta/xrani/lake/index.en.html
There is absolutely no way to avoid submarine patents, as basically
everything is patented, including any means of doing something on a remote
server, for example. Thus, you can either take the risk or shut down all
Debian infrastructure in the US and co.
They don't need any real matter to drag you into costly litigation. A
Cease&Desist requesting you to stop breathing because you infringe their
exclusive rights to air will cost you less than a litigation due to a
completely obvious patent, but with enough money thrown into harassing you,
it _will_ cost you a lot of time, effort and, at least temporarily, money.
--
1KB // Microsoft corollary to Hanlon's razor:
// Never attribute to stupidity what can be
// adequately explained by malice.
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