> Legislatures define the form and scope of legally binding licenses. You can > write whatever you want, but it is only legally binding if some legislature > said it would be.
Sorry, but that is almost sheer nonsense. I say almost, because I think you are just about touching on the legal issue of a contract (and we know how horrible they can be at times). In my nation, at least, the legal binding of any license or contract is determined by the judiciary. The case law surrounding the concept is quite solid. Licenses are legally binding - there is no doubt here. The form can matter, and licenses have evolved a great deal to compensate for this. However many licenses already cover certain assumptions which by and large have proved very solid and upholdable in many regimes, including my own. The debate has shifted focus though from the original point. The argument is not the validity of a license, but the fact that a license does exist and is attached to a feed. It exists. To ignore it or remove it is, at best, morally unsound and, at worst, criminal. Paddy On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 4:28 PM, Jay Rossiter <[email protected]> wrote: On 12/28/2009 1:19 PM, Bob Wyman wrote: >>> 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. > > I'm sorry - that's just a silly statement. Copyright and licenses >>are two different things. If what you say were true, then no EULA or >>software license (e.g. GPL) would be legal. > >> Those licenses define how and where and under what circumstances the >>things that it covers can be used. They can require that attribution >>always be maintained, and even that the license itself is always >>included (GPL and most other software licenses), they can require almost >>anything within reason, really. > >> Licenses are binding legal documents, they are not legislatively >>provided copyright protections. >
