On Mon, Dec 18, 2000 at 10:27:52PM -0700, John Galt wrote: > > Fair use is fair use, and therefore not subject to restrictions. > > Yeah, but fair use tends to blur when profit is made off of the use. In > main, it is likely that CD distributor foo makes a bit of cash off the > sale (hence the reasoning behind the "no commercial use" clauses > making non-free). This may invalidate "fair use" or at least stretch the > reasoning a little farther than necessary. Debian itself is non-profit, > but main may open up a can of worms. Just as an aside, non-profits have > consistently gotten the benefit of the doubt in Fair Use determination, so > that may tip the scale, but erring on the side of caution is definitely > the preferable option.
That stance is somewhat ridiculous. We don't know (or rather we do know, but you'd rather assume we don't), so just to be on the safe side you'd rather avoid doing anything because someone, somewhere might possibly send a lawyer after us for doing something? If you're that timid, you don't belong in the software market since there's always the threat that someone, somewhere will try to sue you whether they have a legal basis to do so or not. If you're really concerned about limitations of fair use, consider fortunes-mod first. The package outright makes no promises that things are even attributed correctly. While we have plenty of potential license issues to worry about, this really isn't one of them. I'm sure nobody at the media companies is afraid that a fan-created quote database is going to affect their sales, so they have no need to try and twist laws so they can attack anyone over it. And as they are, there are no laws I know of which would make distributing a fortune database (even as part of a larger collection sold for profit) anything but fair use, if properly attributed. -- Joseph Carter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> GnuPG key 1024D/DCF9DAB3 Debian GNU/Linux (http://www.debian.org/) 20F6 2261 F185 7A3E 79FC The QuakeForge Project (http://quakeforge.net/) 44F9 8FF7 D7A3 DCF9 DAB3 <Sanaya> you guys are all sick! sick sick sick I tell ya ;)
