Re: Status of US Government Works in foreign countries

[Ben Finney]

Ian Jackson <ijack...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:

> Ben Finney writes ("Re: Status of US Government Works in foreign countries"):
> > The cases are different, this license text grants no permission to
> > redistribute at all.
> > 
> > If you think it does, what text do you see that grants permission to
> > redistribute in modified or unmodified form?
>
> You mean that `use, copy and create derivative works' might not
> include distribution of copies ?

There is no mention of any permission to distribute. I don't see any
sensible reading of a grant of only “use, copy and create derivative
works” that would allow the recipient to presume permission to
redistribute anything.

> I think that's a tendentious reading. I think we can discount the risk
> that the US government would attack distributors of free software on
> such a basis.

Even dismissing that, which I didn't raise as a possibility, the simple
application of legal conservatism – the organisation's lawyers reads the
text to grant as little as possible – is sufficient to concern the
Debian Project for not having explicit permission to redistribute.

The copyright holder doesn't need to be hostile, merely unwilling to
grant more than what's already in writing. Surely we have enough
experience with that to consider it a risk.

> However, I agree that it would be better if it said:
>   use, copy, modify and distribute the Software and works 
>   derived from it
> or something.

If the permission to redistribute the work, as required by DFSG §1, were
explicit in the license grant, then yes that would help a lot.

-- 
 \“The whole area of [treating source code as intellectual |
  `\property] is almost assuring a customer that you are not going |
_o__)   to do any innovation in the future.” —Gary Barnett |
Ben Finney

Re: Status of US Government Works in foreign countries

[Ben Finney]

Ian Jackson <ijack...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:

> Ben Finney writes ("Re: Status of US Government Works in foreign countries"):
> > One large problem: I can't see that the above conditions grant
> > freedom to redistribute in modified or unmodified form. That fails
> > the DFSG, by my reading.
>
> This is not a problem here for the same reason that it is not a
> problem for nauty.

The cases are different, this license text grants no permission to
redistribute at all.

If you think it does, what text do you see that grants permission to
redistribute in modified or unmodified form?

-- 
 \ “This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending |
  `\  the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the |
_o__)   hopes of its children.” —Dwight Eisenhower, 1953-04-16 |
Ben Finney

Re: Status of US Government Works in foreign countries

[Ian Jackson]

Ben Finney writes ("Re: Status of US Government Works in foreign countries"):
> The cases are different, this license text grants no permission to
> redistribute at all.
> 
> If you think it does, what text do you see that grants permission to
> redistribute in modified or unmodified form?

You mean that `use, copy and create derivative works' might not
include distribution of copies ?

I think that's a tendentious reading.  I think we can discount the
risk that the US government would attack distributors of free software
on such a basis.

However, I agree that it would be better if it said:
  use, copy, modify and distribute the Software and works 
  derived from it
or something.

Ian.

Re: Status of US Government Works in foreign countries

[Ian Jackson]

Ben Finney writes ("Re: Status of US Government Works in foreign countries"):
> One large problem: I can't see that the above conditions grant freedom
> to redistribute in modified or unmodified form. That fails the DFSG, by
> my reading.

This is not a problem here for the same reason that it is not a
problem for nauty.

Ian.

Re: Status of US Government Works in foreign countries

[Ben Finney]

Ben Finney  writes:

> One large problem: I can't see that the above conditions grant freedom
> to redistribute in modified or unmodified form. That fails the DFSG, by
> my reading.

Another large problem: the stated conditions do not grant freedom for
the recipient to grant license to anyone else under the same terms. That
also fails the DFSG.

> By comparison, the Expat license grants permission:

If the copyright holder were to grant license under the Expat license
conditions, that would fix both of the above problems.

-- 
 \“[R]ightful liberty is unobstructed action, according to our |
  `\will, within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of |
_o__) others.” —Thomas Jefferson, 1819 |
Ben Finney

Re: Status of US Government Works in foreign countries

[Ben Finney]

Rytis  writes:

> Apparently, lawyers of the US Commerce Department didn't want to give
> up property rights but they modified the license to say the following
> [1].
>
> ---
> This Software was created by U.S. Government employees and therefore
> is not subject to copyright in the United States (17 U.S.C. §105). The
> United States/U.S. Department of Commerce (“Commerce”) reserve all
> rights to seek and obtain copyright protection in countries other than
> the United States. The United States/Commerce hereby grant to User a
> royalty-free, nonexclusive license to use, copy, and create derivative
> works of the Software outside of the United States.
> ---
>
> Last sentence seems to be a dense endorsement of FOSS principles and,
> while probably not the cleanest way to state it, appears at first
> sight to comply with free software licenses.
>
> Anyone have a take on this?

It's a good effort at free software. Are you in correspondence with
those people? (Thank you.)

The “use” permission is vague enough to be pretty much pointless IMO. I
don't know whether anyone's actions under copyright law have ever
referred to the copyright holder granting permission to “use” the work.
But it's not a problem for DFSG-conformance.

One large problem: I can't see that the above conditions grant freedom
to redistribute in modified or unmodified form. That fails the DFSG, by
my reading.


By comparison, the Expat license grants permission:

[…] to deal in the Software without restriction, including without
limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so […]

If the set of permissions granted in X13 could be extended to say that,
we'd be in a better position with regard to the DFSG.

-- 
 \“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they |
  `\ are the solution.” —Clay Shirky, 2012 |
_o__)  |
Ben Finney

Re: Status of US Government Works in foreign countries

[Rytis]

Dear debian-legal,

I'd like to follow up concering this previous thread. As advised by Paul,
I contacted a month ago developers of X13. They seem to be very nice
people and they forwarded my request to the legal department.

Apparently, lawyers of the US Commerce Department didn't want to give up
property rights but they modified the license to say the following [1].

---
This Software was created by U.S. Government employees and therefore is not 
subject to copyright in the United States (17 U.S.C. §105). The United 
States/U.S. Department of Commerce (“Commerce”) reserve all rights to seek and 
obtain copyright protection in countries other than the United States. The 
United States/Commerce hereby grant to User a royalty-free, nonexclusive 
license to use, copy, and create derivative works of the Software outside of 
the United States.
---

Last sentence seems to be a dense endorsement of FOSS principles and, while 
probably not the cleanest way to state it, appears at first sight to comply 
with free software licenses.

Anyone have a take on this?

Rytis

[1] https://www.census.gov/srd/www/disclaimer.html

On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 10:50:31PM -0500, Paul Tagliamonte wrote:

[ The following is the views of me, personally. They are not the views
 of either the Debian FTP Team, nor those of the US Federal Government,
 my employer ]

On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 09:35:15PM +0100, Rytis wrote:

US Goverment public domain issue has been discussed a few times in this
mailing list [1]. According to the interpretation by [2], this would
fall into public domain abroad as well and second part of the above
licence snippet may be unenforceable.


So, I mean, the US Federal Government *can* hold copyrights of works
they have not created, and US Copyright does, in fact, carve out all
rights for works produced by the Federal Government outside the US.

Folks doing modern things in Government do something like[1]


As a work of the United States Government, this project is in the public
domain within the United States.

Additionally, we waive copyright and related rights in the work
worldwide through the CC0 1.0 Universal public domain dedication.


[1]: 
https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/caseflow/blob/master/LICENSE.md

Asking them to include such a notice would be neato. You can point them
to the work being done by 18F and USDS if you need to show them it's
fine.

FWIW, the Census people (I've interacted with them in the past) are real
cool.


I wonder therefore whether it is legally sound to state licence as
'public-domain' for the package and include the licence and disclaimer
text from the website. Would the package under this license qualify as
free, non-free or should be outside Debian?


Yeah, so, most Government folks are actually nice. You should email them
and say that you're interested in using the data / software that's
distributed outside the strict boundries of the USA.

That being said, I've *never* heard of the US Government enforcing this,
ever. That's not to say someone won't think that's a fun idea. Because,
trust me, someone will.

If it weren't an ethics conflict, I'd even email them and ask myself.


In my view, libtnt package in the main repo may be the one setting a
precedent here as it refers to the same (17 U.S.C §105), although its


precedent is meaningless - if anything, it just means the other package
gets pulled along with the new one :P


licence does not specify restrictions to foreign countries.

[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/04/msg00164.html
[2] https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/04/msg00300.html

Rytis



Cheers,
 Paul

Re: Status of US Government Works in foreign countries

[Florian Weimer]

* Paul R. Tagliamonte:

> Have a link to 3-4 such webpages I can take a look at?

“Copyright laws differ internationally. While a U.S. government work
is not protectable under U.S. copyright laws, the work may be
protected under the copyright laws of other jurisdictions when used in
these jurisdictions. The U.S. government may assert copyright outside
of the United States for U.S. government works.”



“Therefore, the U.S. Government may obtain protection in other
countries depending on the treatment of government works by the
national copyright law of the particular country. Copyright is
sometimes asserted by U.S. Government agencies outside the United
States.”

Re: Status of US Government Works in foreign countries

[Paul R. Tagliamonte]

Have a link to 3-4 such webpages I can take a look at?

  Paul
On Jan 15, 2016 2:47 AM, "Hendrik Weimer"  wrote:

> Charles Plessy  writes:
>
> > so you wrote on your blog six years ago that distributing works done by
> US
> > government institutions is "a trap".  Do you have concrete examples of
> cases
> > where people fell in that trap and got hurt since then ?
>
> The "trap" is a reference to the similar situation in Java back then,
> i.e., you might have to invest more work to get rid of tainted
> code/content than it would have been to use properly licensed stuff to
> begin with.
>
> Actually, I find it quite remarkable that at least some US agencies have
> now started to put in explicit warnings into their works that all
> overseas rights are being reserved. This certainly shows they are aware
> of the situation, with actual enforcement being the next logical step.
>
> Hendrik
>
>

Re: Status of US Government Works in foreign countries

[Charles Plessy]

> Rytis  writes:
> 
> > US Goverment public domain issue has been discussed a few times in this
> > mailing list [1]. According to the interpretation by [2], this would
> > fall into public domain abroad as well and second part of the above
> > licence snippet may be unenforceable.

Le Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 07:02:04PM +0100, Hendrik Weimer a écrit :
> 
> Unfortunately, this interpretation is wrong. I wrote about this some
> time ago when there was yet another discusion on debian-legal:
> 
 
> In my opinion, such software should not be distributed by Debian
> because it puts mirror operators located outside of the US at risk.

Hi Hendrik,

so you wrote on your blog six years ago that distributing works done by US
government institutions is "a trap".  Do you have concrete examples of cases
where people fell in that trap and got hurt since then ?

Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan

Re: Status of US Government Works in foreign countries

[Hendrik Weimer]

Charles Plessy  writes:

> so you wrote on your blog six years ago that distributing works done by US
> government institutions is "a trap".  Do you have concrete examples of cases
> where people fell in that trap and got hurt since then ?

The "trap" is a reference to the similar situation in Java back then,
i.e., you might have to invest more work to get rid of tainted
code/content than it would have been to use properly licensed stuff to
begin with.

Actually, I find it quite remarkable that at least some US agencies have
now started to put in explicit warnings into their works that all
overseas rights are being reserved. This certainly shows they are aware
of the situation, with actual enforcement being the next logical step.

Hendrik

Re: Status of US Government Works in foreign countries

[Hendrik Weimer]

Rytis  writes:

> US Goverment public domain issue has been discussed a few times in this
> mailing list [1]. According to the interpretation by [2], this would
> fall into public domain abroad as well and second part of the above
> licence snippet may be unenforceable.

Unfortunately, this interpretation is wrong. I wrote about this some
time ago when there was yet another discusion on debian-legal:


> I wonder therefore whether it is legally sound to state licence as
> 'public-domain' for the package and include the licence and disclaimer
> text from the website. Would the package under this license qualify as
> free, non-free or should be outside Debian?

In my opinion, such software should not be distributed by Debian
because it puts mirror operators located outside of the US at risk.

Hendrik

Re: Status of US Government Works in foreign countries

[Paul Tagliamonte]

[ The following is the views of me, personally. They are not the views
  of either the Debian FTP Team, nor those of the US Federal Government,
  my employer ]

On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 09:35:15PM +0100, Rytis wrote:
> US Goverment public domain issue has been discussed a few times in this
> mailing list [1]. According to the interpretation by [2], this would
> fall into public domain abroad as well and second part of the above
> licence snippet may be unenforceable.

So, I mean, the US Federal Government *can* hold copyrights of works
they have not created, and US Copyright does, in fact, carve out all
rights for works produced by the Federal Government outside the US.

Folks doing modern things in Government do something like[1]

> As a work of the United States Government, this project is in the public
> domain within the United States.
> 
> Additionally, we waive copyright and related rights in the work
> worldwide through the CC0 1.0 Universal public domain dedication.

[1]: 
https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/caseflow/blob/master/LICENSE.md

Asking them to include such a notice would be neato. You can point them
to the work being done by 18F and USDS if you need to show them it's
fine.

FWIW, the Census people (I've interacted with them in the past) are real
cool.

> I wonder therefore whether it is legally sound to state licence as
> 'public-domain' for the package and include the licence and disclaimer
> text from the website. Would the package under this license qualify as
> free, non-free or should be outside Debian?

Yeah, so, most Government folks are actually nice. You should email them
and say that you're interested in using the data / software that's
distributed outside the strict boundries of the USA.

That being said, I've *never* heard of the US Government enforcing this,
ever. That's not to say someone won't think that's a fun idea. Because,
trust me, someone will.

If it weren't an ethics conflict, I'd even email them and ask myself.

> In my view, libtnt package in the main repo may be the one setting a
> precedent here as it refers to the same (17 U.S.C §105), although its

precedent is meaningless - if anything, it just means the other package
gets pulled along with the new one :P

> licence does not specify restrictions to foreign countries.
> 
> [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/04/msg00164.html
> [2] https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/04/msg00300.html
> 
> Rytis
> 

Cheers,
  Paul


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