Re: [News] SFLC Responds to Copyright Misconceptions, Presents MoglenTalk

[Alexander Terekhov]

Take your meds, Hyman.

Hyman Rosen wrote:
> 
> On 2/10/2010 10:08 AM, Alexander Terekhov wrote:
> > At some point, the New York bar will have no choice but to disbar the
> > entire gang of utterly incompetent GNU arch legal beagles from SFLC for
> > consistent filing of frivolous lawsuits such as
> > http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2009/dec/14/busybox-gpl-lawsuit/ in
> > which (1) "the Software Freedom Conservancy" is utterly frivolous
> > 'plaintiff' because it doesn't own ANY busybox copyrights and (2) Erik
> > Andersen is also utterly frivolous 'plaintiff' because he was NOT joined
> > by Bruce Perens and other contributors to the joint work known as
> > busybox at http://busybox.net/.
> 
> The SFLC has had successful outcomes in every single case
> that it has filed - all defendants have come into compliance
> with the GPL. No defendant has chosen to fight the plaintiffs.
> I understand how frustrating it must be for the GPL skeptics
> to see such untrammeled success, and how they must hope for
> some external force to appear and turn things their way. But
> that won't happen.
> 
> You are also quite wrong about joint works in at leats
> four separate ways.
> 
> <http://library.findlaw.com/1999/Jan/1/241478.html>,
>      According to the Copyright Act, the authors of a joint
>      work jointly own the copyright in the work they create.
>      A joint work is defined in Section 101 of the Copyright
>      Act as "a work prepared by two or more authors with the
>      intention that their contributions be merged into
>      inseparable or interdependent parts of a unitary whole."
> 
>      When the copyright in a work is jointly owned, each joint
>      owner can use or license the work in the United States
>      without the consent of the other owner, provided that the
>      use does not destroy the value of the work and the parties
>      do not have an agreement requiring the consent of each
>      owner for use or licensing. A joint owner who licenses a
>      work must share any royalties he or she receives with the
>      other owners.
> 
> First, BusyBox is a joint work only if all the authors have
> agreed to make it so. Given that one of the authors is a party
> to the suit and can insist that he did not intend to form such
> a joint work, the plaintiffs might have a difficult time showing
> otherwise.
> 
> Second, if BusyBox is a joint work, then each author has full
> rights in the work and may sue for infringement without needing
> permission from the other authors.
> 
> Third, even if BusyBox is a joint work, each contributing author
> has released his changes under the GPL, and therefore it may be
> argued that there is an agreement in place among the authors that
> the only way their work may be copied and distributed is by GPL.
> 
> Fourth, even if BusyBox is a joint work, the plaintiffs need to
> demonstrate that they have permission to copy and distribute it
> in some way other than under the GPL, granted to them by some
> author of the joint work. That one author has said after the
> suit was filed that he does not want to be a party to it does
> not mean that he has granted permission to copy and distribute
> BusyBox outside of the GPL.

regards,
alexander.

--
http://gng.z505.com/index.htm 
(GNG is a derecursive recursive derecursion which pwns GNU since it can 
be infinitely looped as GNGNGNGNG...NGNGNG... and can be said backwards 
too, whereas GNU cannot.)