In the academic world it is customary to put your work on-line. If someone want to use it, they must (must as in "they really should do so, and if they don't their papers might be rejected until they give citation") cite you.
When you put something on the web, you hold the copyrights. This means that you explicitly allow everybody to see it, but no one to use it without prior consent. Putting a sotware on the web, doesn't mean everybody could use it. They are all welcome to see what you do (for example, if they need to trace a format of a file), but they are not allowed to use that code without your consent. Once you GPL (X11, BSD, ...) your code, you maintain the ownership of what you did, and allow a fair usage of your work. The same goes for documents. 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. > > -- Orr Dunkelman, [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that reason infallibly be faulty" -- Herman Melville, Moby Dick. Spammers: http://vipe.technion.ac.il/~orrd/spam.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
