Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Video of the FSUK talk from the 19th February

[MJ Ray]

Combined reply to three posts.  You'll be happy to hear that I'm not
expecting to continue this (except points of info and corrections):-

Andy Halsall <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Thursday 28 February 2008 21:17:11 MJ Ray wrote:
> > For example, the WTFPL is at http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/ [...]
> > No Problem Bugroff license is at http://tunes.org/legalese/bugroff.html
[...]
> That would mean that someone could see the talk, really want a copy, and find 
> that the version they have seen is only available for $19.99, is DRM'ed and 
> comes with a license that prevents them from doing anything with it at all 
> other than watching it.

The WTFPL does at least mean that the name must be changed, so they
should be able to find the original on the web fairly easily.

But who are you worried about?  Supporters will be honest with people
about the costs of copying (if any) no matter what the licence and
evil bootleggers will produce the $19.99 DRM version even with the
current licence, so the CC-BY-SA 2.0/uk restrictions are mainly
limiting your sympathisers.  How many sympathisers are going to be
irritated that you've dropped screenfuls of legalese and a
supertrademark on them?  I'm not sure about that, but I believe it's
more than would be irritated by WTFPL, and I thought the point of
these videos was to get the word out as widely as possible.

[...]
> As for the CC logo issue, I would suggest that them revoking the right o use 
> the logo without 'good cause' and enforcing it would (given what their 
> primary business is) amount to estoppal.

Why?  I can't see that CC have ever given us an expectation that their
logo (and probably name - isn't that a trade mark too?) can be used
without limit and I thought that was required for it to be estoppel.
That trade mark policy has said it can be revoked at any time since
fairly early on IIRC.

> Saying that I am not a lawyer and I am not paying mine to tell me.

Yes, lawyerbombs have a chilling effect like that.


Tim Dobson <address@hidden> wrote: [...]
> http://freedomdefined.org is a website which seeks to define whether 
> cultural licences are "free or not".
>
> It is very much inspired by the Free Software Movement's 4 Freedoms.

I seem to remember taking part in some other initiative which was
inspired by the four freedoms and turned some guidelines about the
freedom of works into a definition of whether licences were OK or not.
In hindsight, overall, it was a mistake and we shouldn't have done it.

Mako, lovely guy that he is, has now done a similar thing for cultural
licences.  Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

> The licence ajehals used requires you to atribute it, modify it, but 
> also allows you to redistribute it (even for profit!),, as far as I 
> understand. [...]

Only until permission is revoked by CC.


Tim Dobson <address@hidden> wrote:
> http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en/

I think it's GPL-incompatible due to section 5 and generally
poorly-worded (in English, at least) with several lawyerbombs.  Also,
I think it's impractical because section 2.2 might mean that the
originals have to be hosted forever.  Section 2.2 also forbids
anonymous contributions, which might be a problem.

> The FSF endorses this licence for cultural works.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
"Please don't use it for software or documentation, since it is
incompatible with the GNU GPL and with the GNU FDL."  Are the talks
documentation?  Interesting question.

> (though I think perhaps we should be GDFL'ing these talks? - probably 
> not but just a suggestion)

Well, wouldn't it be rather tedious to have the whole FDL displayed in
the video, as required by the FDL section 4.H?  Other wordings are
pretty print-specific, more than the GPL is program-specific, which I
suspect could hide lawyerbombs.  I think CC-BY-SA is better than FDL,
but the buggy 2.0/uk one should be avoided.

Hope that explains,
-- 
MJ Ray http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html tel:+44-844-4437-237 -
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