An interesting point: If a member of staff at LL is basically saying "none of you can comprehend this policy", then that surely means none of us can actually consent to agree to it.
Q - you may have just provided some "fuel" for use in any future court case On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 8:42 AM, Morgaine <morgaine.din...@googlemail.com> wrote: > On 21st March, Q Linden explained to us that legalese is not a language > amenable to "common sense" interpretation, and more specifically, that > programmers like ourselves should not expect to understand this Linden TPV > policy document using our normal logic and our normal dictionary. I'll > repeat his words here for clarity: > > > Kent Quirk (Q Linden) q at lindenlab.com > Sun Mar 21 10:24:13 PDT 2010 > > I'm emphatically not a lawyer and I don't speak for our legal team. But: > > Legalese is a specialized language. It's not strictly English, and it's not > always amenable to "common sense" interpretation. Think of lawyers as people > who write code in an underspecified language for a buggy compiler, and you > begin to understand why legalese is the way it is. There's a lot of law that > isn't stated, but is actually implied by the context of the existing settled > law. What that means is that if you're not a lawyer, you probably shouldn't > be attempting to interpret legal documents -- especially not for other > people. Similarly, if you're not a programmer, attempting to interpret > program source code is a risky business. Programmers are especially > susceptible to trying to interpret legal documents using a normal dictionary > because they're logical thinkers. That doesn't always work. If you have > legal questions about the implication of documents, you should ask a lawyer, > not a mailing list. > > Similarly, any comment by one of Linden's lawyers in this forum or any other > could possibly be treated as legally binding. That also goes for Linden > employees, especially those with any seniority. So you're unlikely to get > further remarks or "clarifications", except general statements that don't > address specific questions. The policy was revised based on comments on this > list and elsewhere. That's probably a pretty good indication that Linden > Lab's lawyers now think it's clear enough to state its intent and to stand > up in court if they need it to. > > Q > > > I've been thinking about this extraordinary post and its relationship to our > ongoing saga about the TPV, and I fail to see how any rational person could > agree to something unknown, except under duress. Is it even legal to be > required to agree to the incomprehensible? Does anyone know how the law > works in this area? > > The GPL license was written by FSF lawyers specifically to be understood by > programmers, so it's no surprise that the large majority of people here > understand it. Given that Lindens claim that they are issuing a valid GPL > license, perhaps one might accept that at face value, and assume that GPLv2 > clauses 6, 7, 11 and 12 remain intact and valid. Therefore there are no > "further restrictions" imposed on SL TPV developers (clause 6), and the "NO > WARRANTY" clause (11-12) continues to protect developers from downstream > liability, and no "conditions are imposed on you that contradict the > conditions of this License" thus making the license valid (clause 7). > > Given the forgoing, the officially incomprehensible TPV document then no > longer matters to SL TPV developers, because their rights and freedoms and > lack of liability are determined entirely by the GPL. (It could be no other > way anyway, since we are told that we cannot understand the TPV.) > > That leaves only the matter of users of TPVs behaving responsibly when they > use TPV clients in SL, with which I'm sure every person on this list is > happy to agree. (Note that developers become users when they connect to SL, > and are bound by the same requirements as users.) When users do something > bad with a TPV client, or indeed with a Linden client, then naturally they > are personally responsible for their actions. > > In the absence of a TPV document that we can comprehend, perhaps this is the > best that TPV developers can do, since agreeing to incomprehensible > conditions is not something that any sensible person should consider. > > > Morgaine. > > > > _______________________________________________ > Policies and (un)subscribe information available here: > http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/OpenSource-Dev > Please read the policies before posting to keep unmoderated posting > privileges > -- “Lanie, I’m going to print more printers. Lots more printers. One for everyone. That’s worth going to jail for. That’s worth anything.” - Printcrime by Cory Doctrow Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html _______________________________________________ Policies and (un)subscribe information available here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/OpenSource-Dev Please read the policies before posting to keep unmoderated posting privileges
