Quoting Don Armstrong ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): > I'm at a loss to find where copyright law specifies the terms and > forms of an agreement or license.
(Note: "Agreement" is your addition to this discussion, part of your attempt to change the subject to contract law. I spoke nowhere of "agreements".) Assuming we're talking about USA jurisdictions: 17 USC 106 et seq. enumerates rights reserved to copyright owners by default. Others are conveyed automatically to any lawful recipient of a covered work -- the default licence implicit in copyright law. (The fact that the word "licence" doesn't appear in the Copyright Act is entirely irrelevant to the subject.) GPLv2 is an example of a grant of some of those reserved rights subject to specified conditions, above and beyond the default rights conveyed. The BSD licence is another. > See other messages in this thread in regards to consideration. I've been seeing them for many years, ad nauseum. Whether valid consideration exists sounds open to question. > [I'm not all together sure why privity would play a role.... Why am I not surprised? If you are asserting that licences must apply through contract mechanisms (which is what I understand to be your -- tediously familiar from past iterations of this discussion -- argument), then privity of contract between the licensor and third-hand recipients becomes a problem. You might be able to build a case that those downloading the tarball directly from the author's site undergo the required offer & acceptance, but further uploads and downloads entail no such relationship between recipient and licensor. >>> Licenses obey the forms of either a contract or a lease or they are >>> not legally valid. >> >> That is false. Please read, for example, GNU GPLv2. > > It has been argued that the GPL follows the forms of a legal > agreement, or contract between two parties. Do I correctly understand that you are incapable of understanding the plain language of GPLv2 clause 0? The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: > If it doesn't, from which common law cases or statute does it draw its > legal authority? In the USA, 17 USC 101 et seq. (Copyright Act). -- Cheers, Ever wonder why the _same people_ Rick Moen make up _all_ the conspiracy theories? [EMAIL PROTECTED]