On Sun, 29 Feb 2004, Yoni Rabkin Katzenell wrote: > > Correct me if I'm wrong here. I'm going out on a limb and saying what is > on my mind. No need to get offended, I'm just another non-lawyer playing > the "this is legal and that is not" game with you all. > > Let us say that I have a work that is publicly displayed with no > license. I find out that someone has copied my work. Can I now call that > person up and tell him/her that I had a license all along but kept it > "Hidden" and now I want that person to abide by that license or be sued? > > I don't know that answer to the above, it is really a question, not a > sarcastic remark. > > I think that anyone who has put work on the net with no license text > what so ever has lost that work because that person has shown that > he/she has no interest to *diligently* and *aggressively* protect that > work. Beyond that, who is willing to say that they *really* understand > the license that they use for text (not code) or have had a lawyer look > at it and explain it to them. Guessing will get you killed in court. > > Let me continue to say that if a Bulgarian copies a lecture that had no > license displayed in any way. The only way that individual can get sued > is if the copyright holder (that just woke up all of the sudden and > decided to be a copyright holder) sues the Bulgarian. > > So what follows is, if no-one is prepared to sue them, why the trouble? > If you put a license on your work then you need to be prepared to defend > it. Anyone thinking of taking a Bulgarian to court over a lecture slide? > If not, then you lose the copyright anyway because you fail to defend it > *aggressively*. > > Lastly: In my opinion the lectures are already copied and copied > again. This is a good thing. Remember stories of hackers just passing > someone's screen and thinking "that's cool, I'll use that". Now we > license first and share later. Why are you collecting "Haifux > Intellectual Property", will Haifux really sue? > > All that said. Deep breath, relaxation. I'm deeply interested in the way > people see these issues but I realise I go about it a bit heavy handed. > > A plain Haifux license that everyone understands and that > has been approved by a real lawyer should reside over *all* works and > one (and only one) person or body should enforce it. Otherwise you will > have a group people that are all not lawyers, all guessing and arguing > about "license this and license that" while the Bulgarians have "Save > As..."ed all of Haifux long ago. > >
As far as I understand this, no license means all right reserved. We are not trying to enforce any rights here, but rather the opposite. We are explicitely releasing some of the rights over the slides. Most amusingly, those who care about free software usually care about not stealing. This is why we were asked for the slides in the first place - because they care about our rights. Since we are not trying to posses rights, but rather to give them, and since people vary in what exactly it is that they want to keep to themselves (their name? using the material in a non-commercial way? public domain?), I do not see a point in having to agree on a "haifux license", just because the lecture was given in Taub. What would you do with guests? And Telux members? Another point is that the IP can only be given to a legal entity - namely Hamakor and not haifux. Not all haifux members wish that. A part of the freedom of the software, in my opinion, if the right to decide on the license that the things I write will carry. And there is no need to bother with the legal stuff - stating what you want is simple enough, using Creative Commons licenses, for example. Like I don't see anybody bothering with the GPL - It is legally sound, and all we programmers need to say is just that the software is GPL-ed. Orna. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
