Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2005 05:52:21 +0100 From: Anthony Atkielski <atkielski.anthony@wanadoo.fr> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: favor Message-ID: <1485510257.20050205055221@wanadoo.fr> In-Reply-To: <200502042343.39455.m.hauber@mchsi.com> References: <4203F451.9070307@cis.strath.ac.uk> <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNGEEAFAAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com> <205350680.20050205043947@wanadoo.fr> <200502042343.39455.m.hauber@mchsi.com>
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Mike Hauber writes: MH> Not wanting to jump into this, because I think the whole of the MH> argument is ridiculous... But, in a nutshell... Aren't you MH> trying to make the same argument that SCO is trying to make? I'm not familiar with SCO's argument. The principles of copyright have existed for a long time. People seem to think that the Internet is somehow a "copyright-free" zone, where anyone can do anything, but that just isn't the case, as accumulating jurisprudence proves. MH> (all due respect, of course) I just don't see the validity of "I MH> don't care if the code was legally released to the open source MH> communities eons ago! I don't care how much time and effort has MH> been spent building on it. It's mine and I want it back!" Explicitly releasing something and "implicitly" releasing it are two different things. In general, one never implicitly relinquishes a copyright. In some domains of IP, this happens: the failure to actively defend a trademark can cause it to be lost, for example. But copyrights remain, even if nothing is done to defend them, and copyrighted material is never implicitly licensed to anyone. MH> Don't get me wrong. I've made public posts that I look back and MH> cringe on because I know it's still out there somewhere. Hell... MH> Maybe there's only two of us. That's life, and we live it MH> anyway. In many cases, you can force those posts to be removed from venues to which you did not originally post them and for which you never reached any type of licensing agreement. People regularly do this in the case of Google, for example. MH> Fact is, the cats out of the bag, and I have yet to meet a cat MH> that likes bags. :) The cat is being pushed back into the bag rather rapidly. The legal profession was slow to apply the law to the Internet, but it is learning fast. The fact that so few people have chosen to enforce their copyrights doesn't mean that these copyrights don't exist or cannot be enforced. And woe to those who feel that they can flagrantly infringe with impunity; eventually they may come across someone who doesn't feel the same way and has the will and the resources to sue. -- Anthony
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