Hey, for sake of our children's children's children who will research that, you should maybe create another topic for the legal matters :) (and Ithink it deserves one anyway!)
Julien -- Julien Genestoux, http://twitter.com/julien51 http://superfeedr.com +1 (415) 830 6574 +33 (0)9 70 44 76 29 On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 11:16 PM, Jay Rossiter <[email protected]> wrote: > On 12/28/2009 1:53 PM, Bob Wyman wrote: > > On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 4:28 PM, Jay Rossiter <[email protected]>wrote: > > Licenses are binding legal documents, they are > > not legislatively provided copyright protections. > > What is and is not a binding legal document and what is the proper form or > scope of a legally binding document is defined by legislatures. Neither > standards groups nor individuals can define what is legally binding -- they > aren't legislatures. > > > Providing written notice of restrictions is legally binding. See "No > Trespassing". > > > > Imagine if this wasn't the case... Then, I could insert "license > restrictions" in any content I created and do it in some totally random way > that you'd never heard of. Then, on discovering that you hadn't done what I > said, I could sue you and claim that you should have studied the bits before > you did anything with them. You might argue that I hadn't tagged my > "license" in some "standard" way, but I would just argue that I have as much > standing as any Standards group as far as the law is concerned. The only way > that I can force you to take notice of my particular way of encoding license > terms is if I use a format defined by a legislature. > > > The legislature limits what can and can't be restricted. Courts decide > if violations fall within the allowed contexts. If you insert a restriction > into your content in a way that is intentionally hard to find, the courts > will find it invalid. That has NOTHING to do with whether it would have > been valid had you made it visible. Any attempts to restrict something > after it had already been implied would also be found invalid (attempting to > restrict viewing the content, when viewing the content is required to view > the restriction, e.g.). > > > If anyone could randomly declare limitations on the use of their content > then we'd have to simply shut down the Internet since you'd never know what > rights you had until you'd already touched some data and potentially had > already violated the terms! The Internet would be too dangerous to use if > the law allowed people to create such licenses. > > > See above. > > > This limitation of the scope of unilateral declarations of license terms > is, of course, explicitly noticed in all the Creative Commons licenses -- > that are normally what people are concerned with. All of these licenses > contain explicit statements that they do not restrict rights otherwise > granted by copyright. For instance, they all say: "ANY USE OF THE WORK OTHER > THAN AS AUTHORIZED UNDER THIS LICENSE *OR COPYRIGHT LAW* IS PROHIBITED." > That means that the Creative Commons license prohibits nothing that is > otherwise permitted under copyright law. The CC licenses also include the > following: "If the standard suite of rights granted under applicable > copyright law includes additional rights not granted under this License, > such additional rights are deemed to be included in the License; this > License is not intended to restrict the license of any rights under > applicable law." So, at least twice in each Creative Commons license you > will find a statement that CC licenses do not restrict any rights otherwise > granted under copyright... > > > CC is only once license. The fact that it doesn't prohibit anything > has no bearing on other licenses. They can, and do, prohibit many things. > Copyright law does not prohibit further restrictions. It is a specific set > of allowances and protections. > > > > > 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. > >
