On Sat, Jul 10, 2004 at 11:41:23PM +1000, Cozmin Grigoras wrote:
> Is it highly illegal to make some ISO's of those CD'S
> and DVD's and place them on the FTP site ?

If everything on the disk is distributed under a license that
allows redistribution, it's probably OK.  I don't know whether
that's the case with these, or not.  I'm inclined to doubt it,
otherwise reaction to the give-away would have been a bit more
ho-hum.

> ...I mean since Novell gave them for free,

ITYM "at no charge, beyond the registration requirement"

Cash is just one means of holding and exchanging value, but
certainly not the only one.  Contact information obviously has
value, given that companies often offer some consideration in
exchange for registration like this.

> and paid for shipping, and now has economic difficulties..:)
> Of course the ISO's would have a note attached wich gives all
> the credit to Novell...

All of which is irrelevant.  Either you're copying a portion
under conditions of fair use, or you have the copyright holder's
permission (which is what licenses like the modified BSD license
and the GPL are--permission).  Or not.  Copying an entire work
verbatim is probably tough to justify under fair use.

http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html

-- 
Joe

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