On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 3:45 PM, Pádraic Brady <[email protected]>wrote: > If a Hub strips that license, ... > Distributing downstream at that point is illegal. If this was true, then distributing any content that did not include a license would be illegal. But, that is clearly not the case. The only thing that is lost when a license is stripped is that a downstream user can't claim permission for uses not otherwise permitted by copyright.
No statement that you put in your content can increase the rights granted to you by copyright law. The most you can do by putting statements in your content is to waive rights granted to you or grant those rights to others. How can the water rise above its source? When you put "license" text content, you can be as explicit as you want to be. However, that doesn't mean that anything you claim, write, etc. has any legal weight. What has weight is what the legislature says has weight and there is no legislature that has ever defined any format or protocol for specifying license rights in digital content. Because this is an issue of the law, not technology, no "standard" defined by any non-legislative body can serve to define such formats. Only legislatures, or other law makers (Kings, dictators, rulers, etc.), define the law. Standards are not laws and have no legal weight unless explicitly incorporated into the law. > If I make a feed available, and it specifies > a license, I just explicitly gave rights away You can only give rights away if, in fact, some law gave you those rights in the first place. In the case of syndication feeds, HTML pages, etc. there is generally an assumption that facilitative copying, facilitative transformations, etc. are permitted and that permitting this limited form of copying and transformation does not extend as far as permitting derivative works, etc. bob wyman On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 3:45 PM, Pádraic Brady <[email protected]>wrote: > > Actually, "license/copyright" should be the least controversial stuff to > remove during a reformatting operation. > > How so? If I make a feed available, and it specifies a license, I just > explicitly gave rights away - I'm not in any default/assumed halfway house. > I just informed everyone how to distribute, under what circumstances to > distribute, and when you must stop distributing (etc). If a Hub strips that > license, they remove the rights it granted, and some of those rights include > copying/distributing. Distributing downstream at that point is illegal. > That's the benefit of being deliberate in adding a license to a feed in the > first place. It's also why it is controversial - we can't always rely on > automated systems to make the right choice. Indeed, how many automated > systems actually do? In the imperfect system we live with, we're lucky to > even see a URI back to the original source sometimes ;). > > > Paddy > > Pádraic Brady > > http://blog.astrumfutura.com > http://www.survivethedeepend.com > OpenID Europe Foundation Irish Representative<http://www.openideurope.eu/> > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* Bob Wyman <[email protected]> > *To:* [email protected] > *Sent:* Mon, December 28, 2009 8:14:30 PM > > *Subject:* Re: [pubsubhubbub] Normalizing Fat Pings to Atom > > On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Pádraic Brady <[email protected]>wrote: > > In my mind, any normalisation which removes a > > license/copyright would be in breach by default > > - no question in my mind. > > Actually, "license/copyright" should be the least controversial stuff to > remove during a reformatting operation. The reason is that removing such > data can do no harm to the publisher. > Copyright law defines the maximum level of control that a creator or > publisher has over content unless there are explicit contracts in force. > Nothing that a publisher can put into their content can, in any way, > restrict third-party use of the content any more than copyright already does > by default. Thus, the worst you can do by removing any sort of licensing > language from a feed is to cause the feed to be controlled by raw copyright. > > You say: "many licenses require attribution". I think you may be referring > here to things like Creative Commons licenses... However, no Creative > Commons license actually *restricts* the use of content. What Creative > Commons does is grant rights that would normally not be granted by > copyright. Thus, an "attribution required" license really says: "You can > copy this content, even if copyright law would normally prevent such > copying, as long as you provide attribution." Creative Commons doesn't > "prohibit" copying without attribution, copyright does that. What Creative > Commons does is "permit" copying if there is attribution. Removing the > Creative Commons license actually imposes *greater* restrictions on the use > of the data -- by preventing all non-facilitative copying instead of > permitting some such uses. > The same is true of things like "Non-Commercial Use Only" Creative Commons > licenses. These things don't actually forbid commercial use, they actually > just say that non-commercial use is permitted while commercial use remains > prohibited if copyright would prohibit such copying. > > bob wyman > > On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Pádraic Brady <[email protected]>wrote: > >> It's always been a gray area. For myself, I think the acid test is whether >> the information presented by the format is altered (the format itself >> shouldn't matter). So long as the modifications present the information >> accurately, preserve any required copyright/licensing, and only reduce (not >> add) information (as with normalisation a lot), it should be fine. Adding >> information is often hard if it can be viewed downstream as the work of the >> original source. The licensing is the sticky bit - many licenses require >> attribution to be made clear when copying/distributing. In my mind, any >> normalisation which removes a license/copyright would be in breach by >> default - no question in my mind. It's ethically unsound to strip such >> information in my opinion. >> >> >> Paddy >> >> Pádraic Brady >> >> http://blog.astrumfutura.com >> http://www.survivethedeepend.com >> OpenID Europe Foundation Irish Representative<http://www.openideurope.eu/> >> >> >> ------------------------------ >> *From:* Matthew Terenzio <[email protected]> >> *To:* [email protected] >> *Sent:* Mon, December 28, 2009 7:16:46 PM >> >> *Subject:* Re: [pubsubhubbub] Normalizing Fat Pings to Atom >> >> BTW, I'm not saying it's wrong to do. That is between a service and it's >> customers. Just that it shouldn't be part of a spec because of the >> considerations mentioned. >> >> On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 2:13 PM, Matthew Terenzio <[email protected]>wrote: >> >>> Does a hub have a right (legal or ethical) to modify a feed in any way >>> before delivery? >>> >>> Yes, I choose the hub, but the spec allows for federation. Could three >>> hubs down the chain take my feed and make modifications to it that may not >>> be to my liking? >>> >>> I hope not. Maybe Corp A doesn't want their feed being converted to Corp >>> B's protocol. >>> >>> >>> >> >
