On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 6:03 PM, John Panzer <[email protected]> wrote: > I would be annoyed if someone stripped out > the license I put in my feed (which grants > fully copy-ability of my content) because > I _want_ the content of that particular feed > to be freely copied and not munged
Yeah. That would annoy me too!.... But the thing that Pádraic was saying was that the licenses are somehow special. That's what I'm arguing against. I would also be annoyed by any number of other modifications to what I publish. All I'm arguing is that there isn't anything *legally* special about the licenses. Their removal doesn't make distributing my content any more or less legal than would the removal of any other part of my original work. The interesting question here is if *any* modification to the content is permitted. I think it is probably not hard to argue that purely facilitative modifications are acceptable. For instance, character set conversions, removal of non-semantic whitespace or other cruft as a by-product of parsing, and translation between semantically equivelant tag names. (i.e. modifications that are done purely for the sake of facilitating distribution or syndication of the data and which do not modify the author's expression.) The problems arise in cases when you are making semantic modifications to the original content -- not just syntactical conversions. Also, Jay Rossiter wrote: > If what you say were true, then no EULA or > software license (e.g. GPL) would be legal. Actually, many EULAs and other software licenses are nothing more than "scareware." They have no legal weight. They exist to scare people into believing that they have obligations that they don't in fact have. This is why you are often asked to agree to a EULA or license *before* you download stuff. Those pre-download licenses are very enforceable. But, you can't ignore the licenses in stuff you download since often, you'll find that doing anything useful with what you've downloaded is impossible without violating copyright, patent or some other kind of law. For instance, some say that compiling program source means producing derivative works -- which is not permitted under copyright law, or it may be "performing" the work, which has other issues, or perhaps it means using a patented technique which gets you in trouble in a different way. Thus, if you want to do those things, you need to accept the license and stick to what it says. But, if you don't do those things, you've got no issues and the licenses are just wasted, but legal, bits on your disk. But, in the case of the stuff that moves through PSHB, what we have are things that are meant to be distributed and read. If that wasn't the case, then the publisher should never have fed it to PSHB. In publishing to PSHB, the publisher needs to be aware of the usual and customary things that are done with things so published. And, the publisher needs to accept that some facilitative copying, and some facilitative transformation, will be performed. There is an implied license. If this were not the case, then it would be fantastically dangerous to subscribe to a PSHB hub since any publisher could slip in a license that you weren't expecting and you would be bound to abide by it -- even if you didn't realize it was there. This would not be good. (Note: We went through all this years ago with blog feeds. The logic is unchanged.) bob wyman On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 6:03 PM, John Panzer <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 2:12 PM, Pádraic Brady <[email protected]>wrote: > >> > 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. >> > > The Atom specification states that a consumer of content is entitled to > ignore elements it does not understand. There is no requirement in the > standard for consumers to understand licences. So, as a feed provider who > knows what I'm doing, I cannot assume that everyone consuming my feed will > read or understand any licenses I choose to add in. > > (Besides which, as a practical matter, of the actually legally vetted > licenses that are on offer -- CC, basically -- there are none that let me > reduce copying rights for consumers; they all only increase rights beyond > those granted by legislatures, author moral rights, common law, and the > Tooth Fairy.) > > But aside from all this, as a publisher, I would be annoyed if someone > stripped out the license I put in my feed (which grants fully copy-ability > of my content) because I _want_ the content of that particular feed to be > freely copied and not munged (say, to snippet-sized lengths to avoid legal > entanglements in particular contexts). By reducing the freedom to copy of > my downstream consumers, you're hurting me, the publisher. So it's a bad > idea anyway from the POV of at least some publishers, regardless of the > debate above. > > > >> >> 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. >>> >> >> >
