Devices that phone home

Posted Aug 26, 2009 15:46 UTC (Wed) by sepreece (guest, #19270)
In reply to: Devices that phone home by paulj
Parent article: Devices that phone home

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.