> Moglen makes extraordinary claims about the GPL, so why doesn't he come > forward with the appropriate legal citations?
There are not any - no one so far has had the guts to say to Eb - 'see you in court'. > Moglen is a J.D. with a > Ph.D. in history and not an LL.M. So how did he get admitted to the NY Bar and the Supreme Court Bar then? >He would not even be accepted as > qualified for Professorship at many institutions. Name a few examples - Yale? Harvard? No, it cannot be Harvard - he had a visiting professorship there. Perhaps some third rate institutions may not accept him. >What qualifies his word alone as "legal authority"? If what he says resonates with the judges then he IS a legal authority, judges frequently turn to legal writings to help resolve cases. The whole matter of GPL and copyright boils down to one thing - it is whether the owner of the works chooses to characterize any claim as a pure breach of copyright or as a contract breach. If there was the usual acceptance, offer, consideration process where both parties obviously intended to create a legally binding contract then it would be a contract matter (eg EULA's). The owner of the work can merely say 'you have breached copyright law by using my works' and then pre-empt any defence by indicating how the GPL does not permit the act being complained of. It is over to the accused to present a defence by showing how the GPL has permitted the use he has made of the works. If the accused thinks the GPL is a load of hogwash and does not wish to use it in his defence - that is quite OK - he is in breach of copyright law with no defence. No hint or whisper of contract anywhere - bringing contract into it is just a red herring - in pretty well all cases such as this, it probably never even entered the accused's head whether he had a contract with the owner of the works - he just cannot simply whistle up a contract retrospectively to get himelf off the hook. Eb can easily collect scalps for the FSF - this clearly indicated that his interpretation of the law is robust. _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
