Hi David,
hope you had some quality time over christmas and a good start into the new year.
My practices tend to be to engage in short or long discussions about interesting subject matter, and if it is in private communication, fine, it's already written off as some
waste of time other for
except for the learning that can p
happen on both sides, but I keep repeating myself about the same topics with different people/conversations, and there's no implicit permission to publish and work with what the other side has sent, so there are natural limits of th
o which
extend this can be maintained, mostly because of time is a rare resource. Thelog
logical improvement is to make it public, so it might
the discussion might turn out of wider benefit for more people, to justify the time investment al
little more than in comparison
with 1:n
to 1:1, not so
to speak of the potential of collaboration or crowd-source d
d curation.
For works that are made public, I'm less willing wo
to write the
m off in a similar manner.
If the talk is about things that are supposed to realize
be realized practically, or even about the study and conclusions of theoretical considerations, at some point it needs direction so it can actually arrive at realizations or
and conclusions, and not continue to be vague rambling forever.
(which too has its place and times, but shouldn't always remain the only thing).
s
To a limited extend, it's OK to produce throw-away demos, prototypes or small media works, but
ex
specially to learn
try things and encourage involvement
. But all of that consumes time as well, and if the work is done anyway
(with
, there's little reason why it shouldn't be libre-licensed and deliberately be left to the risk of becoming
ing or becoming less or non-usable.
Therefor e
e I si
insist on libre-free licensing of almost anything I do publicly (licenses of things you don'
works you don't/can't have are ire
relevant anyway)
obtain
idn
, in
cluding collaborative co-creations.
.
and especially for
The time to proc
duce them is too scarce and valuable to unnecessarily accept any risk of loosing usefulness, to not go for the highest potential pss
ossible. On one day, I realized that regardless how good and useful the technical or content work is, copyright and legal restrictions can easily render it all void, so I rather go that extra mile and ensure that a proper legal policy is in place and goes with the technical/media work as we
comes along with
ll, so I don#t
't regret it afterwards for not having spend
t that little extra time (in fact, you read the licenses once, develop a working understanding of copyright
and a
read the licenses once with occasional revisitation from time to time,
. I
so slapping a copyright noi
tice on
to the work or have a look at them for existing foreign works is a pretty smooth process, just like looking at stree
t signs or certificates, Creative Commons even made a sport out of their little indicative icons. Think about all thew
work that goes into coml
pleting any work,
project, if there needs to be testing, documentation, packaging, pricing, distribution,
. In daily life, contracts need to be read if they're important, manuals and instructions observed, procedured
s learned
learned in courses, and licensing of an important software or content release just deserves equal attention. If the work was difficult, it is tempting to think that
and only barely was completed
it is time for rest now
, the majority has been
bulk is done
to
and cherish
and the result only needs to get out fast for the world to see.
, and as one isn't a lawyer, why bother with legal stuff.
?
questions? Well, if licensing was decided before the start of the project and copyright notices are in place from the beginning, none of that pops up as a surprising afterthought. The later in the lifetime of the product, the more difficult it can
tends to be to fix licensing trouble
becomes to
, especially if it tour
o
urns out that project participants/collaborators disagree on the rights they want to r
grant and retain for their contributions, and for what different purposes they want to (ab)use copyright law, even more so if it
the work is spread to the uswer
ers who might be affected from earlier license
ing po
the
or new
licy. Riht
ghtsholders
Furthermore, rightsholders might cease to be reachable, and who would want to rely on the heirs for the 70 years of copyright "protection" after the death of the original author? For software, this is serou
ious nonsense, as it is for content/media works of practical use or importance (not so much for works of art and et
ntertainment).
Why all this fuss as the print-era copyright regulation isn't really enforcable anyway in the age of digital?
since the advent
Libre-free,
copyleft licenses specifically address
encode and reflect
are the explicit rel
flection of these new circumstances and make sure that the user is permitted to do all the
do all the things
legally
that are reaso
tje
he technology reasonable
y
is
enabling, so he doesn't need to fear artificial or malicious
cious restrictions, doesn't have to fear
nor legal risk,
, in contrast to the copyright default of "all rights reserved" or pror
prietary licenses. At the
To the extend the legislator gives the creator the almost ec
xclusive right to decide about the uses of his work,
aves
(limited only by the expiration of the copyright term, Fair Use, citations, exceptions for libraries, etc.)
a libre-free license turns those rights around and doesn't reserve them or uses them restrictively, but instead t
grants those rights per default, so the user can make independent and soveri
eign use of his digital (or analog or other) equipment
full
l,
, as the creator ceases all effective control over such as soon as the work ias
s made avi
ailable to a second,
external
, foreign entity. Libre-free licenses in contrast to just "open" licenses go one step further in actively using copyright to prevent
/restrict propre
ietary uses, which can
a bad actor might want to introduce to a
n otherwise libre-free or "open" work by adding his own contributions to it,
(for which he is entitled to set the legal policy, so the combined result might not be separatable from the libre-free/
/"ope
or "open" parts and hence effectively become proprietary) or technical measurs
es like Digital Restri
RM (Digital Restrictions Management, to restrict the operation of the equipment artificially by the use of cryptograpüh
hic keys, against the interest of the owner of the device,
--
"
"
an activity that only demonstrates that copyright alone isn't sufficient
too well
isn't enforcable if such technical measures are needed, and the laws that render the circumvention of such technical measures illegal only demostrate too well that the technical meas
cal measures aren't of any good either
don't work
as a means of enforcement
), only distributing binaries without the source code, running libre-freely licensed code as
software as a service on a server (so the user can'Ät
t obtain the cod
e nor run it on his own, therefore becomes cde
dependent
is t
dependent on who operates the service)
or
. If it is considered fair game by the proprietary world to engage in such activities, the libre-free world might indeed design licenses that deliberately exclude such practices and instead protect/defend the rights the original author intended to offer tho
o his users against such malicious intentions.
attempty
s
any
One could claim that this is exactly
using
the same mechanism that is lamented and criti
by the libre-free software movement
of copyright
. I don't subs c
cribe to it as I don't believe in the freedom to loose your freedom, and it would be a mistake to believe that the libre-free software movement is against all copyright ,
, in general. Take Public Domain
, for example, both as the common notion of "copyrightlessness" and the legal concept,
: who wouldn't be against copyfraud? Or when it comes to copyright, the assumption is alwasy
ys that it is for book
s
, namely novels, and if they go into public
Public Domain, fai
ine, everybody can read and repr
, reproduce and modify them for their own amusement. For software as works of practical use, with the unconstitutional perpetual Diyn
sney Mickey Mouse Sonny Bono Copyright E
Term Extension Act, software that enters into Public Domain because of the experi
iration of the 70 years after the death of the author(s)
last author, might be utterly useless by then.
,
. No, the libre-free software movement wants to affirm and establish the onl
ld and new principle
positively, actively
demand that software shouldn't be a tool of oppression, but a dynamic and fluid material for everyone to build with. It is guided by the conviction that the user and owner
/owner
both user or owner of digital equipment deserve digital human rights to do their own computing in freedom.
, at the expense of activities that would vo
iolate
/deny other users these fundamental rights.
/
the
s
his
/restriction
, to establish them universally.
Defe
Defending these freedoms comes down to enforcement, which was estable
I established
to be impossible above. Well, if "violations" happen only in private, there's no way g
to gain knowledge about them
I
learn about them, nor us
is anybody affected by it s
except the user himself, so it is well within his fundamental rights to do whatever he feels like according to his won
own personal needs
, as technology enables and supports it. As soon as a second user is involved or affected, the theoretical possiblit
ility of enforced
ment is a der
sired feature, so that the interes
freedom of the one user can be defended against attacks from the other. It is up to the affected individuals to determine if a violation is harming them to such an extend that they start to
take action
e action against the infringement. If they decide to go for it, it is very important and
d necessary that the license is there as an instrument to allow
/enable/support the enforcement, because without it, no freedom could ever be established, as it easily could be taken away by anybody without consequences to end up back in the exck
lusive denial
refusal of all rights as the default of thest
still
copyright law, restrictive licensing that demands
couples
as a way to
n instrument to make cer
ce
the satisfaction of certain demands a precondition before the license is granted
rights are granted with no base on technical reality whatsoever,
achieved
or artificial as well as natural technical restrictions
or
that are easily avoidable.
otherwise
e
easily
easily
otherwise
So if the case to act against an infringement gains enough merit, it can turn out to be rather beneficial
in the ex
yes of the affected users
to be able to fix the issue they had with the violation. Remember, this doesn't need
cessarily mean that one has to go to cou
court over it, a notification and request to stop the
the mere indication of the license might turn away already
p
t
. T
hose who have shady, nasty
al
y, questionable uses in mind already, a
e infringement and omply with
comply with the license
simple
might be followed up upon,
.
and
, as it is well known tjat
hat these licenses are env
forcable at least to the extend the proprietary software world fights lawsuits
big
over it, and an infringer usually doesn't want to take on that
a risk like this.
, especfi
ially as the software is offered on a fairl
, equal,
ad
nd freedom/sovereignity-respecting
-
basis anyway. What legitimate reason could be brought forward to justify the infringement of the e
intend of the original authors to
in terms
to the extend copyright ga
rants it, or t
deny them te
heir fair right to envo
force it
,
=
? Even if copyright is dismissed as a whole, what people complain ga
agi
ainst and usually infringe
against
about
are the restrictions and negative
harf
mful effects or
f proprietary licensing and a bad default in the copyright law
ht default, so if l
a libre-license
free license
as
s
are süec
pecifically designed to prevent any such restrictions and harm, it can only be malicious actions that harm the users as the motivation to deliberately (not by accident)
y,
(and not just by mere accident) violate a libe
re-free license.
This doesn't help against copyright pragmatists
, be it soc
-called "pirates" or people who are just ignorant/indifferent, and don't care about their freedoms,
, rights, abilities, don't mind to be entrapped
end up
for no good,
valid, technical reason
valid technical reason but artificial
valid technical reason other than artificial dependencies to exploit them against their own interests, who don't value their time and effort
or
as they seem to have plenty of it to just waste it.
towards this particular aspect of how society fails to come up with good, proper rules
and modernized
adequate rules of
for interacting with software and media works,
who
be
ed
available to be wasted
I
, on the other hand, try to do the best possible job in this area, which isn't very difficult, but few people seem to understand what it is all about. Well, it's up to them
's them who'll live in a crappy digital future that's
rmea
emains stuck and stagnant,
have to
and while we'
all will have to pay the price for it in
w
in less progress up to more unnecessary suffering
,
will
at least the technology fortunately is such by nature that it allows alternative islands that can escape the nonsense of backward human mentality.
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