Gentoo Archives: gentoo-project

From: Ulrich Mueller <ulm@g.o>
To: gentoo-project@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-project] rfc: copyright attribution clarifications
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2018 17:51:12
Message-Id: w6ga7mai60z.fsf@kph.uni-mainz.de
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-project] rfc: copyright attribution clarifications by William Hubbs
1 >>>>> On Thu, 15 Nov 2018, William Hubbs wrote:
2
3 >> > On Wed, 14 Nov 2018 09:24:08 +0100
4 >> > Ulrich Mueller <ulm@g.o> wrote:
5 >>
6 >> >> To say it again, ebuilds have a copyright notice for exactly two
7 >> >> reasons:
8 >> >>
9 >> >> - to protect us against the "innocent infringement" defense under
10 >> >> U.S. law, and
11 >> >>
12 >> >> - because the GPL-2 requires in section 1 to "appropriately publish
13 >> >> on each copy an appropriate copyright notice".
14 >> >>
15 >> >> For both of these, it is irrelevant what the precise contents of the
16 >> >> notice is. If you made a significant contribution to the file, then
17 >> >> you can claim copyright for it, even if there is no copyright notice
18 >> >> at all, of if you aren't mentioned in it.
19 >> >>
20 >> >> IANAL, but I think the case for being listed there explicitly is very
21 >> >> weak.
22
23 > Here is what the copyright office has to say about copyright notices:
24
25 > https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ03.pdf
26
27 In fact, I was already aware of that document.
28
29 | Copyright notice is optional for unpublished works, foreign works,
30 | or works published on or after March 1, 1989. When notice is optional,
31 | copyright owners can use any form of notice they wish.
32
33 All ebuilds have been published after 1989-03-01, so the copyright
34 notice is optional.
35
36 | Advantages to Using a Copyright Notice
37 | Although notice is optional for unpublished works, foreign works, or
38 | works published on or after March 1, 1989, using a copyright notice
39 | carries the following benefits:
40 | * Notice makes potential users aware that copyright is claimed in the
41 | work.
42 | * In the case of a published work, a notice may prevent a defendant in
43 | a copyright infringement action from attempting to limit his or her
44 | liability for damages or injunctive relief based on an innocent
45 | infringement defense.
46
47 That is basically what I've said in my first item above. The precise
48 contents of the notice is irrelevant for this, the only important point
49 is having any notice at all.
50
51 | * Notice identifies the copyright owner at the time the work was first
52 | published for parties seeking permission to use the work.
53 | * Notice identifies the year of first publication, which may be used
54 | to determine the term of copyright protection in the case of an
55 | anonymous work, a pseudonymous work, or a work made for hire.
56 | * Notice may prevent the work from becoming an orphan work by
57 | identifying the copyright owner and specifying the term of the
58 | copyright.
59
60 For "indentifying the copyright owner" nothing short of a complete list
61 will suffice. Especially, a notice like the following (which mentions
62 only "Gentoo Authors" and "Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.") does
63 not help with that at all (i.e., it is no better than the simplified
64 notice):
65 https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/tree/sys-cluster/ceph/ceph-13.2.2-r2.ebuild?id=5f77c21f23bf1c4cfb9e68be7aa27669c8146e8e#n1
66
67 Besides, these last three items are pretty much moot for a work released
68 under the GPL-2 (which grants "permission to use"), and I think that
69 even you aren't suggesting that we should go for a complete list of
70 contributors.
71
72 Ulrich

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Re: [gentoo-project] rfc: copyright attribution clarifications William Hubbs <williamh@g.o>