Devices that phone home

Posted Aug 20, 2009 16:08 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341)
In reply to: Devices that phone home by mjg59
Parent article: Devices that phone home

I wasn't analogising, I'm just saying the music industry must surely be a rich source of case law regarding joint ownership works. The case we're looking for is where a rights-holder goes genuinely AWOL, and the other rights-holders agree to something in their absence, with the AWOL rights holder popping up again, well after the fact, and objecting.

I don't really know how to search for cases, just curious if anyone does.

Basically, I strongly suspect the "we can't contact everyone" thing might not be much of an obstacle. If you make all reasonable efforts to contact known rights-holders and publicise a proposed change, over a longish period of time, then I suspect that'd be enough. Like coriordan writes in his piece, if you can show a near-unanimous acceptance of a change amongst known rights-holders, and no objections, then I doubt a judge is going to think it reasonable to prejudice all their interests in the work for the sake of a few AWOL owners. But hey..

TBH, I suspect the /contactable/ rights-holders would be much more of an obstacle ;).

Devices that phone home

Posted Aug 20, 2009 16:18 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (1 responses)

I think the significant difference is that most joint works in the recording industry probably consist of material that was explicitly contributed by the copyright holder, and that's not the case in Linux.

Devices that phone home

Posted Aug 20, 2009 18:40 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

I'm guessing the bulk of Linux code is not imported code..

For the parts that are imported, a bit of due diligence in verifying the background might determine that much of it is easily upgradeable to GPLv3 (e.g. GPLv2 code where the authors didn't go out of their way to remove the "or later" and BSD licensed code). All of it must be GPLv2 compatible, and nearly all of it will also be GPLv3 compatible.

But hey...

Also, in another sub-thread you've argued that when Linus removed "or later" he was doing so within the terms of the GPLv2. That means that the Linux kernel prior to that point *was* licenced under the "or later" clause. At least, it would be by your logic. Linus argued at the time that he had never meant for "or later" to apply, iirc - which seems weak.

Basically, it seems like you could take an older version of Linux and make it GPLv3, given what you say. You could then contact contributors after that point - which seems like a *much* easier job given it was done after kernel went to an SCM (and after SCO)...

Devices that phone home

Posted Aug 26, 2009 15:46 UTC (Wed) by sepreece (guest, #19270) [Link] (1 responses)

Copyright is not like trademark - you can't abandon a copyright, it's yours until it expires. In a work of joint authorship, each and every author has to accede to any licensing change. While there are grey areas around copyright, especially wrt fair use, this isn't one of them.

The recording industry does have very good examples of this, cases where someone wants to issue historical recordings (for instance, recordings of broadcasts not originally licensed for release) or to use recordings in, for instance, soundtracks or commercials. In general, if you can't get permission of all the copyright holders, it can't happen.

A Linux relicensed without explicit permission of all included contributors would be open to infringement suits from anyone who hadn't authorized the change, which would make it generally unappealing to commercial users.

Devices that phone home

Posted Aug 26, 2009 21:40 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

I did ask about recording industry precedent. I'd be very interested to read more of specific cases.

Though the wording of the law (at least in UK) is crystal clear, the real-world remains grey. E.g. your assertion doesn't square with the actual experience of the Mozilla foundation, who managed to relicence even with some uncontactable contributors (as per coriordan at least).

Your reply is very interesting (thanks!), but ideally I'd like to also read actual judgements.