Re: Psystar's legal reply brief in response to Apple

[ZnU]

In article <fsE6o.37053$Bh2.27791@newsfe04.iad>,
 Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com> wrote:

> On 8/5/2010 3:31 PM, ZnU wrote:
> > See section 9.
> >
> > "However, nothing other than this License grants you permission to
> > propagate or modify any covered work. These actions infringe copyright
> > if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or
> > propagating a covered work, you indicate your acceptance of this License
> > to do so."
> >
> > GPL3 _does_ claim you need to accept the license to modify the work even
> > without distribution, or else you're infringing on copyright. This does
> > not actually appear to be the case.
> 
> No. See section 0. <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
>      To ³modify² a work means to copy from or adapt all or part of the
>      work in a fashion requiring copyright permission, other than the
>      making of an exact copy. The resulting work is called a ³modified
>      version² of the earlier work or a work ³based on² the earlier work.
> 
> As a copyright license, the GPL could not possibly demand that it be
> accepted in order to do something for which no permission is required,
> and here it explicitly disclaims any such demands.

This is, at the very least, extremely squirrely, in that they're 
effectively redefining the word "modify" to obfuscate the rights already 
present under copyright law.

-- 
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anyone who is entirely exempt from the gambling instinct; whilst he who has it
must pay to this propensity the appropriate toll." -- John Maynard Keynes