[Bf-committers] copyright and suzanne

Douglas Toltzman doug at oakstreetsoftware.com
Wed Dec 15 16:00:13 CET 2004


On Tue, 14 Dec 2004, Tom M wrote:

> Actually I was being a bit sloppy,
> 
> [QUOTE] Without the license exclusions the content would be a
> derivative work and thus
> the original copyright holder would have control over it.[/QUOTE]
> 
> That isn't quite correct, more accurately it would be an unauthorized
> derivative work and thus the original author could bring suit.  One
> result of which would be control over the derived work.
> 
> LetterRip

United States copyright law also requires that the copyright holder be
vigilant in protecting his/her copyright.  If a copyright holder doesn't
pursue copyright violations, he/she is essentially saying that they have
waived their copyright protection.  Furthermore, the copyright holder must
be able to show monetary damages.

U.S. Copyright laws are convoluted and difficult to understand.  They
do not provide clear guidelines for many, common situations.  For example,
when your browser copies a copyrighted photo from the internet to your
disk cache, that is, technically, a copyright violation.

As the owner of a software development company, and a professional content
creator, I've had several opportunities to research copyright law and to
consult copyright attorneys.  Although you are technically correct, I
do not think the topic merits any anxiety.  By placing something into the
public domain (by including it in a GPL'd program), one had made it next
to impossible to sue for damages base on intellectual property rights.  At
the very least, suzanne should come up with a copyright notice to advise
that suzanne was not covered by the program license.

Patent issues, are another matter.  Generally, the way to defend against
frivolous patent claims is to show prior art.  If a technique was in
common use before the patent was filed, then the patent will be hard to
defend.

This will be my last comment on this topic.  It seems to me like we're
trying to invent problems.

Best regards,
Douglas Toltzman
Hubert, NC




More information about the Bf-committers mailing list