On 19 July 2010 22:16, Simon Ward <si...@bleah.co.uk> wrote: > > > To my knowledge the contract isn’t automatically transferred, although > it occurs to me that it could be a condition of the licence that the > contract is also adhered to. I’m not sure this is the case. > > To the best of my knowledge, violating a contract and making the data available doesn't make the data public domain. Richard Fairhurst pointed out some legal issues about this. To quote him from higher up in the thread: Under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999, "a person who is not a party to a contract (a 'third party') may in his own right enforce a term of the contract if... the term purports to confer a benefit on him". A quick talk with a friend who is a lawyer made abundantly clear that third parties don't have the right to access the data in the first place, since the data was "stolen" through a contract breach in the first place. It would be very very difficult to plead good faith in this case. Then again, we are talking about one aspect of the licence which may be used since it depends on your jurisdiction and the sets of law governing your jurisdiction. It will be very different in France where the concept of moral rights cannot be removed from someone. Copyrights and other "intellectual property" mechanisms will vary very strongly between countries.
Emilie Laffray
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