On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 15:12:41 -0500 Nathanael Nerode wrote: > >1) Some sort of identification of the author of the work is required > >in order to allow people to exercise their DFSG guaranteed freedoms > >upon a work. > > Yes. > > I do not think we should commit to protect *anonymous* authorship per > se, because it does raise legal problems for getting a valid license.
Why?
What legal problems would be raised, if someone (we will never know who)
sends the source code for a work to a mailing list through an anonymous
remailer chain, with the following copyright notice?
| Copyright (c) 2005 Anonymous
|
| Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
| a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
| "Software"), 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, subject to
| the following conditions:
|
| The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
| included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
|
| THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
| EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
| MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
| IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY
| CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT,
| TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE
| SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
Since this is an Expat license, we already have a valid license.
What other legal problems would be there?
>
> I instead think we should commit to protecting *pseudonymous*
> authorship, with real identity kept secret. A dissident (or several
> dissidents) could call him/her/themself "RevolutionaryNumberNine",
> keep his/her real identity secret, and carry out entirely proper
> copyright and license management. I believe pseudonymous copyright is
> supported explicitly by US law, at least.
I would think that it holds in many other jurisdictions, since writing
novels and poems under a pseudonym is a long established practice in
literature...
> (The psedonymous person
> could even have a contact email address routed through one of those
> Scandanavian anonymizers, if necessary.)
I hope you're not referring to obsolete and insecure penet
(pseudo-)anonymous remailers (i.e. type 0 anonymous remailers).
Using a (newnym) nym server is far better, though not as secure as
current state-of-the-art anonymity levels.
Once type-III-remailer-based nym servers are available, the situation
will improve significantly...
>
> The problem of the pseudonymous person contributing code which is not
> theirs to contribute applies, in practice, equally well to named and
> fully identified persons (unfortnately), so is not an argument against
> this. :-(
Indeed.
And I think that the difference between these two cases and the
completely anonymous one is not really meaningful from this point of
view...
--
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
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