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  • From: Bob Kline <bkline AT rksystems.com>
  • To: TDS Development Group <freetds AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Sybase TDS Specification
  • Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 14:40:17 -0400 (EDT)


On 15 Sep 1999, Steven Work wrote:

> Andrew Pimlott <pimlott AT MATH.HARVARD.EDU> writes:
>
> > On Wed, 15 Sep 1999, Greg Beeley wrote:
> >
> > > If we go asserting that 'click-n-sign' EULAs on the Internet might be
> > > invalid, where does that leave things like the GPL and LGPL?
> >
> > It does not affect them. If you reject the GPL, you wind up with rights
> > granted to you by copyright law, which would not permit you to distribute
> > copies at all. In other words, the purpose of the GPL is to grant you
> > _more_ rights than you would otherwise have.
>
> Please do not speak nonsense in a public forum, unintentionally. I
> also do not understand the nuances (it's not my field), but:
>
> Copyright grants the holder the right to place restrictions on use and
> distribution under contract law. The copyright holder can choose to
> establish just about any reasonable terms s/he wishes; thus RMS's
> unusual conditions in the (L)GPL. If copyright is *not* asserted, the
> work belongs to the public domain and no restrictions on use or
> distribution apply.
>
> "Copyright law" doesn't talk about rights or burdens on the user or
> distributor of someone else's copyrighted work; it says the copyright
> holder can place terms (under contract law) on such users or
> distributors.
>
> Or something very much like that.
>

What the U.S. Copyright law actually says is that the owner of copyright
(initially the author, but ownership can be explicitly transferred or
inherited) has "the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the
following:

(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to
the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental,
lease, or lending;
[... and some other rights having primarily to do with the performing
arts]." - U.S. Code Title 17, chapter 1, section 106.

Those rights exists automatically, independent of any actions or
assertions the owner might or might not make. Copyright lawyers are
fond of saying that the copyright comes into existence "as the pen is
lifted from the page." There are some unusual circumstances under
which some categories of work can fall into the public domain by virtue
of having been published without a copyright notice, but that's a
complicated process, and years must elapse before this takes effect --
much too long to be of any interest in our industry. And the owner can
place a work in the public domain, but that takes a very explcit action.

--
Bob Kline
mailto:bkline AT rksystems.com
http://www.rksystems.com





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