Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2005 00:30:39 -0500 From: Mike Hauber <m.hauber@mchsi.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: favor Message-ID: <200502050030.39812.m.hauber@mchsi.com> In-Reply-To: <1485510257.20050205055221@wanadoo.fr> References: <4203F451.9070307@cis.strath.ac.uk> <200502042343.39455.m.hauber@mchsi.com> <1485510257.20050205055221@wanadoo.fr>
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On Friday 04 February 2005 11:52 pm, Anthony Atkielski wrote: > 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. > If I were to send you an email and a header (or signature) stated that you were not privy to the contents of the email, then you could be in serious trouble. By sending the email to you, I am implying that you are allowed to view it. On a public forum (such as this) where there is growth, it is logically implied (if I have any sense) that if I were to post to this forum, it would not only be available on the mirrored lists, but on the future mirroring lists as well. I would be foolish to assume otherwise. > 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. Why is that? Google isn't reposting the information. It's simply letting you know where you can find it. I could understand if Microsoft had a server out there somewhere that had the source code for XP, that they wouldn't want Google pointing the way... (that would be pretty funny, though :) ) But that's different in that it was never released to a public forum in the first place (explicitly or otherwise). Or is what you're referring to specific to Google's caching system? > > 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. In that case, this email is absolutely copyrighted by me (along with my email address, my middle initial, Mother's maiden name, SSN, and my recipie for coffee)... And just the same, I don't think I'll jump on any bandwagons and sue Google for their great service, even if they do cash this page from a future freebsd-questions archive mirror. :) Cheers, Mike
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