[cc-licenses] Version 3.0 - List Discussion Responses
Terry Hancock
hancock at anansispaceworks.com
Mon Sep 25 19:58:31 EDT 2006
drew Roberts wrote:
> Here is a plan that I don't like and would like to prevent.
>
> Write a game for a TPM platofrm. Use my BY-SA works in the game.
> Paralled distribution of my works seperately. Game can only play on
> the bad platform. So, is there some way to require parallel
> distribution (working mind you) of the whole project? (I hope this is
> a little clearer than mud.)
Yes, that's unpleasant, but there's no protection against that, and TPM
provisions have nothing to do with it. The same thing can happen if you
have a set of resources used by a Windows platform (non-TPM) game, that
is only available in a proprietary binary form.
It is the fundamental concept of separation of "content" and "engine"
(or "data" and "program") that creates this loophole, and has nothing to
do with TPM.
The alternative is undesirable, even if there were some way to make it
legally binding:
If the license of the program controlled the license of data created
with it, or the license of data controlled the license of programs that
processed it, then many worse situations would arise:
1) You couldn't write proprietary, BSD-licensed, or other-licensed code
in gcc: everything would be under the same GPLv2+ license that gcc is.
2) If you wrote a story and licensed it CC-By-SA, then people using
Microsoft Word (or Internet Explorer, or Opera) couldn't legally read
it. In fact, even Mozilla couldn't be used, because it's under the MPL,
not the CC-By-SA (and they aren't compatible).
and so on
Even in the remote case that you did like this scenario, you really
don't have the legal authority, because you're overstepping the bounds
of the work (you don't have any legal ownership over the things you want
to control the license to -- even the copyleft can't claim it).
Cheers,
Terry
--
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
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