legal October 2009

legal@lists.fedoraproject.org

13 participants
14 discussions

Re: New blog post
by Rahul Sundaram 07 Oct '09

07 Oct '09

On 10/08/2009 12:40 AM, Colby Hoke wrote:. > > For example, there was a remix of the Truth Happens video that was put > in with some very questionable material. It was offensive. Due to the > copyright (back then we used copyright), we were able to go after that > video and, I assume, have it taken it down. If you allow people to create remixes, they will create some bad remixes but so what? I know of exactly one example of such a thing tnat that is one you are citing here, in how many years of Red Hat putting out videos like this? The example also shows that people who actually go about creating such bad remixes don't have a damn about copyright or licensing. They just will do it and I am pretty sure I can find a copy of that video regardless of what Red Hat does at this point. Look at this this way: Red Hat releases tens of thousands of lines of code and content (such as documentation or even fonts) under various free and open source licenses. It is possible and even likely that someone will add a bad patch to what Red Hat has released or even fork it on occasions. It doesn't negate the benefits at all. Rahul

1 0

Re: [publican-list] Adjusting copyright information
by Paul W. Frields 07 Oct '09

07 Oct '09

On Tue, Oct 06, 2009 at 01:22:46PM +1000, Ruediger Landmann wrote: > On 10/06/2009 09:47 AM, Jeffrey Fearn wrote: > >Mikhail Gusarov wrote: > >>IANAL, but this can be specified in single file, like > >>Common_Content/common/README: "all the data in this directory is under > >>GFDL", but better check with your legal department. > > > >Rudi is talking with the legal people about this, we expect a > >separate update message shortly. > > Thanks Jeff :) > > Red Hat legal has identified a number of ambiguities around the > licenses involved: specifically, the relationship between the > license of the package against the license of the text in the Common > Content files, against the license of books that users produce that > incorporates that Common Content. > > One particular problem is that as things stand right now, if the > text in Common Content is licensed under the GFDL, this means that > any book that anybody builds in Publican that incorporates that text > must also be licensed under the GFDL (or a compatible license). > This, in turn, creates an immediate incompatibility in any brand > package that loads a legal notice with a different license... > > Legal's solution is that we include a note that explicitly spells > out that whatever license appears between the <legalnotice> tags in > the Legal_Notice.xml file applies only to the books into which it is > pre-loaded, and not the text of the Legal Notice file itself. > Furthermore, they suggest pretty much exactly what you suggested, > Mikhail -- we find as permissive a license as possible for the > Common Content files, and license them under that, separately from > the rest of the contents of the package. > > So far we've looked at the WTFPL[1], CC0[2], and the so-called GNU > All-Permissive License[3]. > > We had to regretfully reject the WTFPL on the basis that some people > might find it offensive. :( This is a real shame, because it > basically stands for everything that we need the license on the > Common Content files to stand for... > > When we read the GNU "All-Permissive" License, it turned out to be > not what it claims, since rather than being "all permissive", it > requires re-users to leave the license in place. Relicensing is > therefore as difficult as it is now. > > Although CC0 is cumbersome (check out the full legal code! [4]), it > seems to do what we need it to do. It's therefore the current > favourite as license of choice for the Common Content files, unless > anyone on the list knows of a similarly broad license with less > legalese? > > > Cheers > > Ruediger > > > [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL > > [2] http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ > > [3] http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/License-Notices-for-Other-Files.… > > [4] http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode I'm forwarding a copy of this to the fedora-legal-list -- Spot may be able to suggest something appropriate to cover the publican Common Content. We need this license to be compatible with inclusion in works produced by Fedora Docs, and in works that incorporate content from the Fedora wiki, right? If CC0 can coexist peacefully in that role with the new CC licensing used in both those cases, it does seem like the best contender. -- Paul W. Frields http://paul.frields.org/ gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 http://redhat.com/ - - - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/ irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug

4 8

Re: New blog post
by Tom Callaway 07 Oct '09

07 Oct '09

On 10/07/2009 03:10 PM, Colby Hoke wrote: > I understand all of that. I'm saying what if someone else cuts it up and > each time he mentions developers, he suddenly says Nazis. (Yeah I went > there, I'm just saying...) I tend to believe that the people who want to make disgusting and hateful remixes of our content will do so irregardless of our licensing model. By restricting derivative works, we merely prevent those with good and positive intentions from doing so. Or, to frame it another way, should we prevent people from making code changes to our software because they could turn the software into dangerous viruses or Nazi themed window managers? (Hey, you went there first.) ~spot

1 0

Re: New blog post
by Rahul Sundaram 07 Oct '09

07 Oct '09

On 10/07/2009 09:52 PM, Colby Hoke wrote: > > Put yourself in the shoes of legal - someone takes this video, cuts it > up to make us look bad or misrepresent us in some way- let your > imagination run free... That video gets uploaded, blogged about, people > assume it's from us and someone takes exception. The one hard part about > Creative Commons is the Attribution. On one hand, we want people to know > who originally made the video, on the other hand we don't want our name > associated with a derivative that is malicious. I always as a rule put myself in the shoes of a community member rather than Legal because I understand the community requirements better than the legal requirements. My interest in the legal details are only because they help the community. I can't pretend to be a lawyer but I would have thought a deliberately malicious alteration would have other legal resources compared to simply denying the freedom to remix the video. It is not just translations. What If I want to take a few minutes of the clip and weave it into a different story? What about a different local language voice over? I am sure you can understand why allowing this creative freedom to flourish by providing the source material under a liberal license is useful. > It's tough to do, but we're getting closer. We don't default to > CC-BY-NC-ND anymore- the default drops the NC from that. It's a step in > the right direction and we have it as a goal to do more SA videos. Yes, > we've only done one, to date, but I want our team to do it whenever > possible. Yes, I have been pushing for the NC clause to be dropped for a long time, too. Happy to see progress on that front. > It's a very good idea for the future Fedora videos to be CC-BY-SA. I'll > see what I can do as far as that goes, but we have to follow the advice > of legal counsel. Sure. Copying fedora-legal list. One more thing to consider: We have been doing Flash streaming and using for downloads. Now that Firefox (Epiphany, Opera, Chrome as well) has built-in Ogg support, I think we can stream Ogg Theora videos directly using simple flash fallbacks for browsers that don't support it. In case, you haven't seen Nicu's mail, refer to http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody Rahul

1 0

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

legal October 2009