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Re: When is a GPL program which runs in a web site 'conveyed'?


From: rjack
Subject: Re: When is a GPL program which runs in a web site 'conveyed'?
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 11:52:10 -0400
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 (Windows/20080421)

Hyman Rosen wrote:
Alexander Terekhov wrote:
"However, nothing other than this License grants you
 > permission to propagate or modify any covered work. "

That's NOT true.

You failed to read the Terms and Conditions, where you
would have seen this:

    To "modify" a work means to copy from or adapt all
    or part of the work in a fashion requiring copyright
    permission...

    To "propagate" a work means to do anything with it
    that, without permission, would make you directly or
    secondarily liable for infringement under applicable
    copyright law...

So the license says that if you want to do something that
copyright law would stop you from doing, the only way to
do that is to accept the license. If copyright law lets
you do something, then that action is not covered by the
defined terms "modify" and "propagate", and you don't need
the license to give you that permission anyway.

You're confusing *contract terms* with "scope of use" restrictions
on a copyright *grant of permissions* in a copyright contract.

All copyright license are contracts. Within the contract are
limitations on the actual "uses" of the work (called the scope
of the license).

Contract terms and scope restrictions are two different concepts,
violations of "terms" (contract covenants) are enforced under
contract law, while exceeding the "scope of use" is enforced under
copyright law:

"In light of their facts, those cases thus stand for the entirely unremarkable
principle that “uses” that violate a license agreement constitute copyright
infringement only when those uses would infringe in the absence of any license
agreement at all."; Storage Technology Corporation v.Custom Hardware Engineering & Consulting, Inc., 421 F.3d 1307 (CAFC) (2005)

Sincerely,
Rjack :)

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." -- John Adams, 'Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials,' December 1770





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