[clug] sec: unclassified - Samba Team, on SCO and sweet irony

[Mark Harrison]

On Thu, 2003-08-21 at 18:46, Pearl Louis wrote:

> No, as far as I know about the law, everything is *implicitly* copyrighted.  
Yes, everything has an implicit copyright. But when you make an explicit
licesing arrangement, I thought that such an arrangement was instead of
and not in addition to the implicit and default copyright licensing
terms.


> One thing about the GPL is that it gives users rights which they normally 
> would not have.  These rights are given to them by the copyright holders. If 
> the GPL is invalid, then everything automatically goes back to the default 
> copyright status (you can't just "lose" your copyright like that)
Yes, copyright is never just lost.

>  and all 
> users will have to renegotiate a new license with the copyright holders.  
> Until they do so, they have no agreement with the copyright holders and 
> therefore they have no right to do anything with the code.
You cant just randomly revoke a license either (unless the license says
you can). My point was that you have a license, and that license does
not say anything. If that license (that says nothing) is instead of the
default copyright (rather than in addition to the default), then the
copyright owner has placed no restrictions on the license.
>   Say for example 
> if an author signs a contract with a publisher giving them certain rights 
> over his/her work and they have a dispute and the contract is found to be 
> invalid, of course this doesn't mean that the contract has no terms and 
> therefore the publisher can continue churning out copies.  Which is 
> effectively what you are suggesting.
> 
Yes! I was sugggesting that until the author revokes the license then
the publisher CAN do what they want. Now, if the author worded the
license in a way that meant it could be revoked, then everything works
out well and the author gets payed.
> Pearl

But, I fear I have taken things off topic......but of course feel free
to respond.
Mark.