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posted by
martyb
on Thursday January 18 2018, @02:27PM
from the waiting-for-the-multiverse-donor dept.
from the waiting-for-the-multiverse-donor dept.
Over at the Meshed Insights blog, Simon Phipps writes about why the public domain falls short and more detailed licensing is needed in order to extend rights to a software community.
Yes, public domain may give you the rights you need. But in an open source project, it's not enough for you to determine you personally have the rights you need. In order to function, every user and contributor of the project needs prior confidence they can use, improve and share the code, regardless of their location or the use to which they put it. That confidence also has to extend to their colleagues, customers and community as well.
Source : The Universal Donor
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The Universal Donor (Open Source Licensing)
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You will be the last person to buy a Chrysler.
(Score: 5, Informative) by meustrus on Thursday January 18 2018, @04:32PM (13 children)
The linked article is sadly missing its thesis. That's probably because it's actually a follow-up to this article [meshedinsights.com], which explains why "public domain" doesn't (necessarily) meet the requirements of open source. Particularly informative is this:
This argument applies to a lot of things, but not to public domain projects like SQLite which have gone to significant lengths [sqlite.org] to ensure that their software is freely available even when putting it into the public domain is not locally possible.
The same arguments could be made against "open source" licenses, however, in countries which have fundamentally different licensing schemes and do not recognize foreign copyright. No such countries come to mind, so this argument is only hypothetical. But this fact remains: your rights are subject to who governs them, making "universal" rights fundamentally impossible.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @07:45PM (3 children)
A government cannot grant rights; a government can only restrict rights.
That is important distinction.
There may indeed be universal rights, but it's likely some government (if not every government) is trashing them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @08:37PM
You the powerless only have rights if you can convince the powerful to recognize your rights
(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday January 19 2018, @01:35AM
Your body restricts the right of any cell to develop into a cancerous tumor - is that restricting cells rights, or giving cells the right to live in a system that doesn't destroy itself?
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday January 19 2018, @02:48PM
Yeah right. Let's set you free in the wilderness and see how many of your "universal rights" the bears will respect.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Thursday January 18 2018, @08:06PM (4 children)
It's possible in the USA, and because it is possible, for those of us who live here, it's the best choice for unencumbered release, by far. Because no lawyers, no terms, no nothing.
It's impossible to be certain anywhere that various laws / customs aren't going to interfere with your will. That includes here in the USA - the USA is well known for changing things and applying them ex post facto. If you're looking for certainty, you should probably just jump off a bridge somewhere.
The bit about copyright is just as much of an assumption as any assumption about public domain, and more to the point, as things stand today, it's fluffing IP lawyers to no good purpose in the process.
Public domain makes the will and intent of the author 100% clear: anyone is intended to be able to use the stuff, any way they like, including changing it, adding it to their stuff, etc. If they change it, that change can be theirs or further given away, they can use it commercially, keep the changes to themselves or publish however, whatever. Actual, you know, freedom.
Public domain is the only mechanism that sidelines both lawyers and "you're free but you have to do what I say" restrictions like the GPL at the source. If there are nation-states out there that have twisted the idea of public domain into non-public-domain because [insert stupid reason here], that's for their citizens to fix. As always. We can't be trying to out-think every busted-ass regime out there, nor should we be wasting our time trying to. If you want to release PD, then go ahead and do it, and let the chips of the repressive countries fall where they may.
Further: other posts here talk about the importance of intent, and I agree. Your country can have whatever silly-ass law it wants about PD, but it can't make me attack you. If I say it's PD, it's bloody well PD. Yes, you might have to be careful what you do in your country with your similarly impeded peers, but again, that's for you to fix - it's not my country, it's yours.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday January 19 2018, @02:51PM (3 children)
Except that if you use copyright to ensure freedom instead of restrict it, enemies of that freedom can't take those assurances away without breaking the legal framework that allows them to restrict the flow of information to begin with. They say to keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Sunday January 21 2018, @05:17AM (2 children)
Except that actually doesn't work. It's an illusion the lawyers have deceived you into accepting.
The truth is, they can do it any time, anywhere. They do do it any time, anywhere. Fact: Locks only work when honest people try the door. All you're doing with these procedures is inconveniencing the heck out of yourself, hamstringing the most valuable and honest commercial enterprises, and enriching IP lawyers.
Imposing restrictive and/or oppressive copyright on software quite literally bestows the benefits of the code first and foremost on those who don't care what your license says. The very "evildoers" you would actually be concerned about. If you make using your code illegal, then only criminals will have your code. You're putting weights on entirely the wrong side of the scale. Just like those who copy-protect media. It doesn't actually work, but it manages to considerably disadvantage and inconvenience and even make criminals out of the legitimate user base. You have climbed in bed with the very worst of the malefactors.
Likewise, using copyright to try to replicate the actual function of public domain is entirely misguided: you're putting a load on people who have access to the proper form of IP protection (disclaiming any forward protection / imposition for derivative code with PD) and wasting their time with "protection" that (a) doesn't work in any positive way, and (b) can cost them considerable money and time, and (c) actually benefits the very worst of those you're worried might take advantage, because they're going to hide what they do and you are incredibly unlikely to catch them at it, either. You're also handing the advantage to regimes that break the idea of PD — the very last thing you should want to do. The idea of public domain is what you should be spreading about, so that no right-minded society's citizens are disadvantaged.
And to be perfectly clear: societies that use copyright as a bludgeon, forbidding the author to dispose of it by putting a work in the public domain: Those societies are some of the worst offenders against freedom. They're the ones making you support the IP lawyers and disadvantage those who would otherwise happily use your work.
Copyright is long past its sell-by date for the free software idea. It's exactly like going to the time and expense to build a wall for defense when your opponents have aircraft: Not only does it not work, you are wasting resources you could have used for actual worthy projects, inconveniencing your own citizens, and all the while paying the wall builders who are simply taking advantage of your naiveté.
Clear your mind: Defy invalid social norms.
This post is released to the Public Domain by me, its original author.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday January 22 2018, @02:45PM (1 child)
Sorry, I didn't read your whole response, because you completely misunderstood the most basic point you were responding to. The bad guys are the guys that make the rules. I don't give a rat's ass what lawbreakers do, because I can't control them anyway. But the copyright industry and their army of lawyers? Their enterprise requires that they can show they are following the rules. Sure, they can change the rules. And maybe rule-making is a game we can't win. But "good" and "bad" only tell us what side we're on, not which side will win. Equating those who make and follow the law with criminals who don't is wholly ridiculous.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday January 22 2018, @04:24PM
Which is very funny, because I made precisely that point:
But, hey. You carry on responding to posts you didn't actually read. I'm sure that'll work out really well for you going forward.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday January 18 2018, @09:07PM (3 children)
I think you're right about filling in that this was directly stated to be a reply to an earlier article (which I haven't read yet, thanks for the C/P).
I wouldn't argue that public domain isn't a local conclusion. Perhaps more appropriately it's a defense against infringement or IP claims - it's not tested until and unless a suit is made over it and nobody "invented" it but rather it is a de facto condition which exists... that people started using as if it was a license grant. (That's my conclusion, feel free to disagree.)
But where he is putting the cart before the horse is (from TFA):
We have indeed seen people try to shift copyright into the status of unalienable moral right. My personal belief is that it should be a specialized form of property right and nothing more.
In the end, though, it all comes down to trust. If I assert that code is PD and is fit for use, and I'm wrong, does the project get to use that as a defense? And how is that any different from if I assert that code is GPL or CC licensed and legally fit for use, and I'm wrong? (Assuming in both cases it was proprietary to some other rights holder...)
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday January 19 2018, @03:01PM (2 children)
The advantage of potentially unlimited "moral" copyright is that it neuters the argument for unlimited copyright in general. If Disney had legal assurance that nobody could make a porno out of Steamboat Willy, they would have far less grounds to keep Steamboat Willy unavailable for derivative works.
It does real harm to Disney's future properties having non-family-friendly derivative content floating around out there. Moral rights fix that problem while leaving the door open for Disney to lose absolute control over the financial proceeds of old ideas. With such a framework in place, all that remains are economic arguments, which favor dumping perpetual copyright because it encourages companies like Disney to sit on a treasure hoard of old content and stop producing useful new ideas.
Just a pragmatic and preliminary thought on moral rights.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday January 19 2018, @03:28PM (1 child)
Very interesting. I wasn't focusing quite so much on the moral dimension as I was the idea that copyright is unalienable. IMVVVHO copyright is something that should not vest automatically without some form of registration and attestation in the medium it's fixed in. The notion that "it's somebody's with rights by default" is the issue for me, and I'd much rather have it be, "it's everybody's unless you have taken steps to claim it is your right uniquely." The process to establish a registry that something has a copyright as of a certain date should likewise not be onerous or expensive in the digital age, more like a public registry which would allow legal claims to have some prima facie justification because the third party registrar can attest that someone requested an item have protection as of a certain date. And done publicly because I also have issues with, "See, this was ours because we wrote it and hid it in a vault until just now. Surprise!" An entity should need to have it registered, even if confidentially. So we won't even go to patent amendments - I'm digressing severely enough anyway.
But I can see your point, that disallowance of derivative works works in society's favor / that assurance would enable an eventual copies to be made so long as the work was unaltered.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday January 19 2018, @04:01PM
The immediate problem with that is that registration isn't free, and small players don't know if what they've got is worth anything until they show it to somebody else (i.e. a publisher). Without automatic copyright protections, there's nothing to stop that person from publishing it without paying the creator.
Of course this isn't a problem with self-publishing. And the internet has made self-publishing actually feasible for pretty much anything. But the internet has also proven that without effective curation, there's very little difference between "this book/game/app was never published" and "this book/game/app is buried in a deluge of others of wildly varying quality".
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?