RMS on Copyrightability of APIs

Posted May 2, 2012 16:29 UTC (Wed) by steffen780 (guest, #68142)
In reply to: RMS on Copyrightability of APIs by geofft
Parent article: Fair use or "first excuse"? Oracle v. Google goes to the jury (ars technica)

> Copyright protection only applies to the act of making copies. Using something or modifying something does not require a copyright license, and there's no such thing as useright or modifyright protection.

Totally wrong. From Wiki: "Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time. Generally, it is "the right to copy", but also gives the copyright holder the right to be credited for the work, to determine who may adapt the work to other forms, who may perform the work, who may financially benefit from it, and other related rights."

Copyright is badly named, but it is NOT merely about copying. I'd love to know where that idea comes from as it seems to be propping up more often recently.

> The fact that most software companies believe that "end-user license agreements" are legally enforceable is something the FSF disagrees with.

Yes, but that is not because copyright is only about copying. That is because the restrictions are so extreme and because the user is only given access to the license after purchase, when they need to be told about the conditions before purchase for them to apply (under any sane legal doctrine at least, your jurisdiction and/or judge may disagree). There might be further reasons for their view.

RMS on Copyrightability of APIs

Posted May 4, 2012 7:57 UTC (Fri) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link]

Indeed. I can walk into a shop here in Norway and say: "I would like to purchase a copy of [some-software]", they'll fetch a copy, and tell me the price. I pay, get the copy and leave.

You'd have to be insane to consider what just happened to be something different from a purchase. I stated point blank that I want to purchase, I was told the price, I paid and got the goods. Notice that you can do this directly from the software-vendor in many cases. "Buy" they say in their webshops.

They do -not- say "Get a license to use this software under certain restrictive terms", for example on Adobse own page: "Buy photoshop", "Buy lightroom". They claim you can buy it, they take your money, they give you the software.

To then come a week later when I want to install the thing, and claim that infact that was all just a joke, and I didn't infact buy a copy of photoshop, but instead merely a license, that should get laughed right out of court.

If they don't want to sell copies of photoshop, they should stop advertising photoshop as for sale.

To add insult to injury, the EULA is invariably in a foreign language that I may not even be able to read, and even if I was, it references laws that are not relevant in my jurisdiction and courts that have no jurisdiction here.