Copyright Licenses and Assignments (BitLaw)

[Declan McCullagh]

Nobody ever said the CDR was Usenet. Choate is tilting at windmills
again, a crazed smile on a manical face as he bounces around his
padded room.

Nevertheless it is similar in one or two respects. People posting to
cypherpunks offer an implied license for people to archive and
redistribute for the purposes of transmission and redistribute on an
archive site their copyrighted works. This is not the same as giving
up copyright (I'm sure I've sold some articles that I've posted in
preliminary draft form to cypherpunks at one point or another).

I vaguely recall that this is one of Choate's pet topics, worms have
burrowed deep into his skull and preclude even the usual state of
gibbering nonsense. So I doubt I'll say anything more here.

-Declan



On Sat, Aug 04, 2001 at 08:58:23AM -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
> Some specific info on 'implied' copyright.
> 
> http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/license.html
> 
> The best that Declan can hope for is a 'non-exclusive' copyright, but even
> that would require an exchange (ie a meeting of minds) between the two
> parties. However, that won't fly since, as an operator of at least one of
> the nodes, the policy is that you as the original author release no rights
> by participating in the CDR itself, implied or otherwise - which I've stated
> many times (check the archives). So the 'implied' contract perspective falls
> down because one of the parties involved has EXPLICITLY made known the
> conditions of use. That over-rides ANY implied anything. Further, by the
> other nodes agreeing not to modify backbone traffic they have explicitly
> agreed to this for all parties NOT SUBSCRIBED TO THEIR NODE.
> 
> What we do have is a EXPRESS LICENSE between node operators. And then a
> (potentialy) implied (unless they print a policy on a webpage like SSZ does)
> contract between subscriber and node operator.
> 
> The CDR is NOT(!!!!!!) Usenet, even if we are distributed over several
> nodes.
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
>  --
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>                 God said, "Let Tesla be", and all was light.
> 
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>        The Armadillo Group       ,::////;::-.          James Choate
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