On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:48:17 +1000 Ben Finney wrote: [...] > Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> writes: [...] > > that a requirement for precise > > information on the copyright holder fails the Dissident Test. > > I've not seen the Dissident test applied that way. > > The Dissident test applies to whether the *recipient* of the work can > exercise their freedoms, including the freedom to modify and/or > redistribute, without being forced to personally identify themselves. Exactly. > > The *copyright holder* can't expect to remain anonymous and still be > identified as the copyright holder. (Copyright laws might nevertheless > assert that an anonymous entity can hold copyright, but that's beside > the point here.) No, wait, your parenthetical is *precisely* the point. Copyright laws generally allow copyright holders to stay anonymous or pseudonymous. Obviously, if you want to sue someone for copyright infringement, you have to (at least partially) disclose your identity when you interact with courts and bring evidence that you are really the copyright holder who has hidden his/her identity behind the "anonymous" term or behind a specific pseudonym. However, as long as you are not sueing anyone, you can hold a copyright on a work and still be anonymous or pseudonymous. As an aside, please note that anonymity and pseudonymity are two different, though related, concepts. > > I don't see that the Dissident test applies to the copyright holder > (as opposed to recipients of the work), nor that it's non-free to > require the copyright holder to be personally identifiable. This last one seems to contradict your first statement about the Dissident test: when one modifies a work and redistributes the modified version, he/she automatically holds a copyright on part of the modified work, as long as the modification involved a significant amount of creativity (well, unless he/she is working for hire on behalf of a company or organization, which holds the economic rights then, while moral rights are still his/hers...). Hence, if it's non-free to require modifiers/redistributors to disclose their identity, it's equally non-free to require the same of copyright holders. We can maybe agree that Debian should try and avoid distributing packages whenever there are no means to get in touch with the copyright holders: but on practical grounds, not on the basis of freeness considerations. And anyway, please note that one thing is having means to get in touch with someone, a completely different beast is forcing him/her to disclose his/her identity: the existence of nym servers proves that you can effectively hide your identity, but still be contacted by other people. Explicit disclaimers: this is just my opinion. IANAL, TINLA, IANADD, TINASOTODP. -- http://frx.netsons.org/doc/nanodocs/testing_workstation_install.html Need to read a Debian testing installation walk-through? ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4
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