Scripsit Brian Ristuccia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > On Fri, Jan 21, 2005 at 11:28:35PM +0000, Andres Baravalle wrote:
First off, irrespective of legality and morality, does Debian need another comic downloader in the first place? There is already dailystrips and stripclub in the archive. >> "All comics are copyright of respective owners, and redistribution of >> the comics is, for most comics and in most circumstances, not >> permitted. phpGrabComics is intended for personal use only." > Restricting phpGrabComics to personal use only will prevent its inclusion in > Debian. Otherwise, I see no reason why the project would not include it. I think Andres is trying to CHA with respects to law that make it a criminal offence and/or contributory infringement to distribute a tool that is meant for unlawful copying of the comics. The assertion that he *indends* it to be used for things that are probably fair use might get him off that hook. However, I don't think that there is any need for either Debian or the software author to fear things here. We already distibute several peer-to-peer filesharing implementations whose major real-life use is to distribute unlicensed copies of musical and cinematographic works. However, the software itself is not illegal to maintain or distribute because some legitimate uses have been cooked up. In the same way, it is without doubt possible to dig up some webcomic artists who are willing to allow this kind of downloading, especially not-very-succesful ones who consider any reader a good reader. This ought to demonstrate adequately that the software does have legitimate uses. On the other hand, it is well known that many more succesful comic authors consider such automated downloading distasteful to say the least, especially if they rely on advertising revenue to cover their bandwidth expenses. Shipping the tool with example configuration files that show how to grab, say, Kevin & Kell or Fans! would be a sure way to become universally reviled in the comics community. (Even writing and shipping the tool will be bad karma in the eyes of some even if it doesn't get one sued). In the interest of helping users not piss off people _inadvertently_ it would probably be a really good idea to include in the documentation an explicit warning to only point the thing at strips whose author has explicitly agreed to it. (This should not be a license condition or it would make the thing non-free, but as an informative warning it is fair game). -- Henning Makholm "Monsieur, vous �tes fou."
