Redistribution vs user

[John Cowan]

bruce at perens.com scripsit:

> This is a drastic oversimplification. Licenses are also contracts.
> By executing a license you can contract to give up some rights in exchange
> for being granted other rights. You can not read _any_ of these licenses
> solely in the context of copyright law, every one of them, even the GPL,
> exceeds the scope of copyright law and makes use of contract law as well.

Close reading of the GPL, LGPL, BSD, MIT, and Artistic licenses
show them to consist of 1) a nonexclusive copyright license and 2)
a disclaimer of warranty.  There is and can be no contract whatever,
as the formal elements of a contract are not present, notably including
consideration.  (This statement applies to Anglo-American style
legal systems, not necessarily to others.)

> There is certainly _copying_ involved in the act of transferring a Java
> applet from a web site to the client. I'd consider it distribution.

There is also copying involved in the act of transferring an application
from permanent storage to RAM.  The U.S. copyright law provides an
exemption for this, and it is unclear whether copying from *remote*
permanent storage via the Internet to RAM is included under this
exemption.

-- 
John Cowan                                   cowan at ccil.org
       I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin