Re: [gentoo-project] rfc: copyright attribution clarifications

[Rich Freeman]

On Wed, Nov 14, 2018 at 11:38 AM Patrick McLean <chutzpah@g.o> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 14 Nov 2018 07:58:08 -0800
> Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 11:18 PM Sarah White <kuzetsa@××××××××××.ovh>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > multiline (standard form) copyright attribution doesn't have
> > > anything to do with licensing, and only serves to strengthen
> > > copyleft due to the presence of additional copyright notices which
> > > clearly lay out a list of entities / people with a stake in
> > > protecting the interests of an opensource project remaining
> > > FOSS/Libre.
> >
> > First, git already does this.
>
> It does not, it lists authors, not copyright holders which are not the
> same thing.

Nothing prevents us from adding copyright info to commit messages, and
companies that feel strongly about documenting their copyright over
their contributions would probably be best off doing it in git where
it is less likely to get lost/deleted/etc over time.  It would also be
out of the way for those not looking for this info.

>
> > Second, please cite an example of a copyright lawsuit that was won
> > because multiple notices were listed, or a law that provides
> > protection if multiple notices are provided.  Your claim that doing
> > this "strengthen[s] copyleft" is baseless as far as I can tell.
>
> I don't think it's about citing cases, the GPL has never gotten to
> trial AFAIK, so under that metric, the GPL is useless.

I suggested that you could cite laws as well.  GPL is well-grounded in
copyright law (the law says basically that users of software have no
rights to copy it, and then GPL grants a few extra rights).  The law
takes away, and the GPL gives the user more freedom than they would
have otherwise under the law.

Laundry lists of copyright notices have no particular basis in law, in
particular because copyright law is already incredibly strong without
it.  A notice that names any copyright holder defeats an innocent
infringement defense (which is already a pretty weak defense to begin
with).  Adding more names to the copyright line doesn't do anything
else.

In any case, the claim was made that this "strengthens copyright" and
it is up to those making a claim to back it up with some kind of law
(statutory or case law), not just argue that more text must be better.

If you hold a copyright on something, you can sue somebody for
infringement even if you aren't named directly in the copyright
notice, or even if you aren't named indirectly (Gentoo authors), or
even if there isn't any notice at all.

>
> > The presence of any copyright notice in the form given in US law
> > already defeats the innocent infringement defense, even if it doesn't
> > mention you.  Beyond that copyright law applies whether there is any
> > notice at all.
> >
> > > gentoo's license policy already
> > > requires FOSS/Libre licenses and correctly using copyright law for
> > > copyleft purposes makes everything work correctly when it's used
> > > correctly.
> >
> > Indeed, and for this reason I don't actually see any reason under US
> > copyright law that we couldn't strip out additional copyright notices
> > in code as a result.  US law explicitly makes this illegal only if it
> > is done to hide infringement, and we don't infringe copyright.  I can
> > only imagine the wails of the copyright pro-spam crowd if we actually
> > tried that (not that I'm suggesting it)...
>
> Are you suggesting that stripping out copyright headers is permissable?
> I would talk to a copyright lawyer before making any such assumptions.

Please do.

And again, please cite actual laws or case law, not make hand-waving arguments.

All things are permissible barring a law that says otherwise.  There
is no law in the US at least that forbids removing a copyright notice,
except for the purpose of concealing infringement.

In any case, as I already said I'm not suggesting that we should do
this.  My point is just that copyright notices aren't nearly as
sacrosanct as some people seem to think they are.

-- 
Rich