"Rahul Dhesi" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
"amicus_curious" <[email protected]> writes:
I think that the issue of consideration is paramount. The copyright
laws exist to protect the author's ability to benefit from the author's
artistic cleverness. If the author chooses not to benefit in a
conventional way, the benefit that is expected must at least be defined
clearly enough to determine if someone's alleged violations actually
harm the author...
No, this is complete nonsense. Copyright law exists (in the US) to
encourage creation and dissmemination of creative works for the benefit
of the public. "The Congress shall have Power...To promote the Progress
of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and
Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and
Discoveries."
Why would anyone really care unless there were some benefit to be obtained
by the author due to the right to control the distribution? The copyright
act contains language such as "...to distribute copies or phonorecords of
the work to the public by sale or
other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;", all clearly
implying a financial value of the work and direct financial benefit to the
author. It is silly to suppose that the the purpose of a copyright is to
lock up the author's work and deny the public access.
Free software licenses fit nicely in this, because these licenses are
designed to encourage the wide dissemination of works thus licensed. And
I hope the JMRI attorney remembers to remind the court of this.
It would seem obvious that no license at all would fit even more nicely into
the notion of widely disseminating some work. The GPL has a requirement
that someone deriving something useful from GPL licensed software disclose
the derivation and allow for similiar unrestricted use, but that is not the
case with these silly suits. The only issue is that the violator has failed
to follow the re-publication of the original source code. None of the
instances to date has contested any failure to disclose, which would seem to
be the only opportunity for determining any value.
It is hard to see how such republication has any meaning for the public as
well. The vast majority of people buying a wireless router or similar
device that has been the target of the SFLC lawsuits is never going to
bother with the source code for any internal nitty-gritty of that device.
The few who might are certainly astute enough to know all about GPL software
and astute enough to go to the original project source for any information
rather than some discrete hand me down copy coming from someone using the
code in their product.
Yes, it may reasonable to require a plaintiff to show what damages he
has suffered, but not because that's the goal of copyright law.
You are mixing up (a) the goal of copyright law and (b) the goal of this
specific lawsuit.
--
Rahul
http://rahul.rahul.net/
_______________________________________________
gnu-misc-discuss mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
