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Re: GNU licenses


From: David Kastrup
Subject: Re: GNU licenses
Date: Sun, 03 Sep 2006 20:12:04 +0200
User-agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.0.50 (gnu/linux)

Merijn de Weerd <merijn+nospam@realemail.net> writes:

> On 2006-09-03, John Hasler <john@dhh.gt.org> wrote:
>> Merijn de Weerd writes:
>>> If someone accepts a license, then does not adhere to the terms,
>>> your sole action is to sue for breach. You can't say he is
>>> infringing, since you licensed him to do the acts. He just does
>>> not adhere to your conditions.
>>
>> No.  You file against him for copyright infringement.  You don't
>> mention the license.  He then has to present the license as a
>> defense.  When he does so you argue that he has no license to do
>> the things he is doing and so is infringing your copyright.
>
> To which he'd respond that he is not infringing your copyright since
> he has a license that authorizes him to do the acts in question. The
> only issue is whether his performance of his side of the contract is
> adequate. That's contract, not copyright law.

Actually, interpretation of the terms of a license is more or less the
same process as with contracts, but in my opinion, we are still more
or less in the realm of copyright law, though with the required
expertise for contract law.

In practice, it is rather hard to say what law might ultimately be
decisive, since in almost every case up to now the phrase "To which
he'd respond" has ended in the court saying "Your reply means this and
that.  Are you sure you want to dig yourself in any deeper?" and an
out-of-court settlement.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum


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