-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Sep 29, 2008, at 10:19 AM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
But there's nothing illegal about reverse engineering it. Unless perhaps you've signed a contract saying you wouldn't (did George Mason? Perhaps, if they have an EndNote license).
Initially, I agreed. But it appears that George Mason did sign a site- wide license agreement (see the paragraph labeled #12 at http://dltj.org/article/zotero-lawsuit-extracts/ ), and the license agreement explicitly prohibits reverse engineering (paragraph labeled #15). To the best of my layman's understanding of the legal system, contract law (the license agreement) trumps copyright and patent law.
I hope George Mason U is willing to stand up for Zotero. It's popular enough that hopefully they will.
They /may/ be. Paragraph #31 says that GMU referred the matter to outside counsel. I suppose we just need to watch and wait to see what happens.
Peter - -- Peter Murray http://www.pandc.org/peter/work/ Assistant Director, New Service Development tel:+1-614-728-3600;ext=338 OhioLINK: the Ohio Library and Information Network Columbus, Ohio The Disruptive Library Technology Jester http://dltj.org/ Attrib-Noncomm-Share http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (Darwin) Comment: Ask me how you can start digitally signing your email! iD8DBQFI4OtR4+t4qSfPIHIRAmhLAKCtGklJ5TZCtyWLNtOymXUQSTM02ACgpB8G MOelJRqOYnXUS7uqRHAHIXI= =oh68 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----