Robert Burrell Donkin ha scritto:
On Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 2:14 PM, Stefano Bagnara <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Robert Burrell Donkin ha scritto:
> On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 11:07 AM, Stefano Bagnara <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I understand that there is difference between downloading and
>> distributing, but this difference IMHO exists when the license is known
>> and the license itself make a difference (most licenses do). I don't
>> agree that by downloading and *using* files under an unknown license you
>> make "fair use" and it is ok
>
> copyright law distinguishes between these two cases (downloading and
> distributing). copying works is often only arguably illegal.
> distributing a copy without a license to do so is clearly illegal.
>
> for example, in order to view a web page, a local copy must be made.
> few web pages explicitly license this copying. however, in most
> jurisdictions this act would be covered by the fair use of the implied
> license. this is very different from distributing the same page for
> example by hosting a complete copy on your website.
There are IMHO 2 important differences:
1) We are downloading the file from maven central, that is not where the
copyright holder published it (or at least we don't know this and we are
trying to understand who is the copyright holder and what rights he
grants to us).
do you know that the copyright holder didn't publish it there? most
maven poms are uploader by the copyright holder. do you know that the
uploaded doesn't posses a license to distribute the pom?
No we don't know who was the uploader (this is what we are trying to
understand), so we can't assume that the uploader was the copyright
holder. I also don't think that codehaus MAVENUPLOAD is too specific
about what kind of pom you can upload there. They only talk about
technical issues and never about legal issues.
i'm happy to act in good faith. even though the central repository
lacks embedded licenses, i trust that the administrators have obtained
the required permissions. if not they my defense would be that i acted
in good faith believing that maven had secured the appropriate
licenses. i think i have reasonable cause for believing that.
What I don't understand is why you would use this as your defense and
this is not the same if that pom is included in our distribution. IMHO
the "good faith" is the same, here.. only the use we make is different,
isn't it?
2) Downloading a webpage for browsing is much more clear as "fair use"
than automatically download metadata as part of an automated project. I
can browse google as fair use, but I'm not sure I can create
applications scraping google results without referencing google as part
of an automated software. In fact they provides API with a much more
limited license to do that. If I write a tool that query Amazon via AWS
I can only make 1 query per second as per their license. If I write a
tool that simply browse their website and do thousands of query per
seconds to do the same things I would do with their API I don't think
this would be taken as "fair use".
AIUI fair use is simply the description given to the rights grant
under the US constitution. temporary local copies for personal use are
ok provided that you have rights to copy once. when someone places a
page on the internet with the obvious aim of encouraging people to
read it then they are granting an implied license. this in turn
entitles people to their constitutional rights to make temporary
copies for personal use.
AIUI additional legislation was inacted to criminalize large scale
automatic querying since it was not clearly covered by standard
copyright
- robert
"personal use" is key in your explanation. I don't think our
distributions are only intended for personal use. ASF is business
friendly and our products are likely to be used professionally and for
business and not for personal use.
Stefano
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