NOTE to the reader, when I below make references to Intellectual Property laws (or any other legal matter) I'm referring to the laws of Sweden and the EU, please keep that in mind. The laws of the US may differ.
On Friday, April 09, 2004 7:20 PM Joe Mucchiello wrote: > This attitude amazes me. immoral? No, what is immoral is being > granted a gift and asking for more. You are not granted a gift in OGL, you pay for the right to use OGC with the provisions laid out in article 7. OGL is more like a trade deal. > Without the OGL there would be no OGC or PI. There are several licenses that can be used to create Open Content, for example GPL, OOGL and the CC licenses. OGL is not necessarily the best of these - it is certainly the only one who makes onerous demands on the licensees. > You would not be able to make use of that other person's content at > all except under the highly nebulas "fair use" provisions of the > various countries' copyright laws. The OGL is a minefield? No, > "fair use" is a minefield. I would say that the "fair use" provisions of the copyright laws in the EU are easier to understand and thus in a way safer than the US fair-use doctrine. They are in general less flexible than the fair-use rules but I would never trade the rights I have according to the Swedish copyright act for the US fair-use doctrine. > > How is PI unfair? Unfair is not having any access to the material > at all. Unreasonable? Hey, you can ask for permission to use the > PI. The OGL has a specific provision granting this exception. > Unlawful? I'm sure that actual adhesion contracts (even in Sweden) > are only unlawful where there is no quid pro quo. I think getting > access to the OGC is an excellent benefit that giving up the PI is > an equal exchange. With the term "unlawful" I mean a provision which in effect is in direct violation of the law. OGL violates Swedish laws, articles 1.b, 7 and 12 in the OGL are unlawful. A provision in a contract which violates the law is either declared void or replaced with applicable law. The parties involved can of course treat the terms as valid, but the party who in court successfully argues that a provision is unlawful is guaranteed that the court will remove or replace the term, regardless of the spirit of the contract or the consequences it may have to the other party. The idea of Open Content is to create a pool of shared material which in almost all respects acts as if it were public domain but where the original copyright holder retains some of his rights. None of the restrictions imposed on the licensee by OGL are necessary to create such a pool of shared material. > You say allowing someone to "own" something in a contract they > aren't entitled to own is immoral? So Non-Disclosure Agreements are > by definition immoral since they usually assert that some idea is > owned by one entity and the other entity is only allowed to learn > the idea if they promise not to tell anyone about it. Don't > adoption contracts allow someone to own a child? (Granted that's > extremely off-topic. My point is owning something normal not > allowed to owned in a contract is not immoral.) Now this argument amazes me! Claiming ownership of things you don't and can't own is not immoral? An element of a literary work which falls outside the copyrightable subject matter belongs to all of us - it is part of the public domain. Declaring such a literary element for which one owns the copyright as PI is quite OK by me. > You do not have a moral right to create derivative works based on > someone else's writing. It is only in the US that you may not create derivate works without asking for permission, in most of Europe you can do so freely. In most EU copyright laws a derivate work is called "an adaptation", you are free to publish such works too, but if you want to avoid possible legal troubles you better ask for permission to publish before doing so. Note - the original author have no right to any copyrights in an adaptation. > The OGL grants you that right with certain limitations. If you > don't like the limitations don't try to take advantage of the right > being offered. Yes, and as long as those limitations are fair and reasonable the deal is fine, but as it happens some of the provisions of OGL are not. /Peter _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
