Linking and the GPL

[John Cowan]

Angelo Schneider scripsit:

> E.g. buying a Audio CD, burning copies from it and distributing them to
> friends is only fair use if you have less than 13 copies. That is a
> court ruling in germany. 

But not elsewhere.  The U.S. has much more liberal fair-use provisions
than most countries do, and is specifically a matter for case-by-case
determination by the court trying the infringement suit.  There are
issues the court must, by law, consider:

1)	The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a
	commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

2)	The nature of the copyrighted work;

3)	The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the
	copyrighted work as a whole; and

4)	The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the
	copyrighted work.

But these are not the only factors the court *may* consider, and it is
explicitly encouraged to do a balancing act.

> Making a "derived work" falls fully under copy right law, there is no
> FAIR USE clause applyable to "derived work".

Not true in the U.S.: for example, an excerpt from a copyrighted work A
in a review or a scholarly work B makes B a derivative work of A,
but is (almost certainly) permitted by fair use.

-- 
John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan at ccil.org
Please leave your values        |       Check your assumptions.  In fact,
   at the front desk.           |          check your assumptions at the door.
     --sign in Paris hotel      |            --Miles Vorkosigan
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