Re: copyright law wackyness
On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Ben Finney wrote:
> Note that (as Paul implies) it is *copyright law* which restricts. A
> license is effectively a special relaxation of the restrictions in
> copyright law.
>
> That's why we go to such pedantic efforts to make sure the license for a
> work exists and is effective, because it's only the license grant that
> relieves the default restrictions on recipients of Debian.
>
> So “the license has no effect” is an undesirable state, since in the
> absence of an effective copyright license the recipient of a work has
> the full force of copyright restriction on their actions.
Indeed.
> I found that document a little difficult to follow. What does the author
> assert is the case when a license grant is not specific to a person and
> is not transferred “in writing”?
For the in writing bit, I think the following sentence is fairly easy
to understand. I took it to mean that the GPL doesn't apply unless it
is in writing:
According to to mentioned provisions of the SCA all of such licenses
are granted in contrary to the law, therefore they are all
non-existent, including the GPL.
The other part is less clear to me and it refers to contracts rather
than licenses, but the document author seems to think it applies to
the GPL.
--
bye,
pabs
http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
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