Gordon Willem Klok <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Part of this is nonsense and I dont mean to pick on you in particular > but I have seen it repeated a few times now and its getting annoying. > > If licenses were as viral as some of you people imagine that one cannot > look at a source file copyrighted with a dumb license interpert what the > code does and create your own version parts of the LINUX KERNEL WOULD BE > SUBJECT TO THE APSL and imagine the CDDL as well but I dont mess around > with sun hardware... Seriously you can go look at some of their recent > mac powerpc drivers and you can see plenty of references to where bits > of information were taken from darwin, they have done nothing wrong.
You got me. I'm not a lawyer. But before you assume you're in the free & clear, you might want to look at these: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000101----000-.html text of us statue defining derivative work. http://www.ivanhoffman.com/fairusemusic.html fair use - "music sampling" http://www.ivanhoffman.com/helpful.html pointers to more interesting copyright cases. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell_v._Acuff-Rose_Music,_Inc. parody - fair use? 4 grounds: purpose, nature, substantiality, effect on market case by case - no general rule. http://www.chillingeffects.org/derivative/ derivative works. "all or parts". 4 part rule again. http://www.chillingeffects.org/derivative/faq.cgi note last case - "same expression". also note in many cases, words like "probably not", "that depends", etc. That means you're in a grey zone, which means you could be right, and you could still end up in court. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_leading_legal_cases_in_copyright_law lots and lots of case law. some of them are even relevant, some is not. http://www.low-life.fsnet.co.uk/copyright/ copyright and sampling. UK. http://dvinfo.net/articles/business/copyrightfaq4.php lots of stuff. Note question 30: "new recording based on parts of other songs" "usually not legal". "may fall into the category of derivative work". This isn't a black & white thing. There's a lot of grey here, with room for lots of expensive legal maneuvering, and you can definitely find case law on both sides of the coin. The biggest saving grace I can see here is since the GPL folks aren't in fact a for-profit concern, they can't really claim much in the way of monetary damages in their market. That *might* save you on ground #4. One of the things I learned in constructing the above list is a lot has happened with music sampling and copyright law in the past decade, and questions that were formerly in the grey area might not be anymore. All of this stuff is evolving rapidly. When I've talked to lawyers in the past, they've been very clear there's "probably safe" and "nearly certainly safe" - and there's a choice you make. They'll cheerfully tell you what's nearly certainly safe, and urge you to take that, and it will very likely seem quite unreasonable - especially after they say even that's not absolutely safe. Part of the judgement call you get to make very often is what will the other guy actually decide to do, and why. One of the many reasons I went into software development instead of lawyering is that computers are a lot more straight-forward. -Marcus Watts
