Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 15:03:14 -0400 From: Dan Flemming <danflemming@mac.com> To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Copyright fallacies Message-ID: <39808772.F35C8AA8@mac.com> References: <bulk.94551.20000726233201@hub.freebsd.org> <14720.31940.975964.313440@guru.mired.org>
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Mike Meyer wrote: > > Actually, you can't legally sell something you don't own. So true. That's why fences can be prosecuted. :) > Legal protection for software is copyright law. Well, sort of. If I break into a computer store and steal all their Windows CDs, I am not guilty of copyright infringement, just theft of the physical objects. 'Course, if I then install Windows on some computers, using those CDs, without a valid license, then I'm also guilty of copyright infringement. Software in a physical form is personal property, and protected as such, in addition to any copyright issues that may affect its usage. > The sundry owners of FreeBSD > allow anyone to make copies of it under specific conditions. This should read, the owners of the copyrighted materials used in the production of FreeBSD. > Neither of them place dollar limits on the cost of copying, though GNU > restricts what can be charged for. You can legally charge whatever you > can get away with for a CD with FreeBSD on it or a system installtion > - i.e., a *copy* of FreeBSD. You can't sell FreeBSD itself, though. In > both cases you need to read and understand all the relevant licenses > (the FreeBSD license and the GPL). That is, you can sell a CD which has copyrighted software on it, so long as you don't infringe the license; but unless you're the copyright holder, you can't assign the copyright. > As for something that really is "free for everyeone" - meaning it's in > the public domain (something that doesn't happen very often any more), > you can legally put a copyright on that and sell it. This is simply wrong. Actually, lots of stuff is PD. Everything Shakespeare wrote, for example. You can sell PD materials, but you can't copyright them. They have no copyright to be had. > You can't legally > claim it as your own work, which leaves the potentially embarrassing > problem of explaining how you got the copyright. Oh, you could claim it was yours, as long as you didn't misrepresent yourself as a copyright holder or in some other way attempt to defraud. If you claimed to be the sole author of gcc, I'm sure you could have a fun time embarrassing those with a low geek threshold. :) A quick tip: Lying is legal. Cops do it all the time. > In fact, taking something that is PD (or covered by a BSD-like > license) and forming a company to market it is a standard industry > practice. Sure. Why not? Tech support's a big industry. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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