LAB Public License proposal

[John Cowan]

DJ Anubis scripsit:

> "No one is not supposed to be unaware of the law".

	Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know
	the law, but because it is an excuse every man will plead,
	and no man can tell how to refute him.
		--John Selden, 1584-1684

Nevertheless, this is not always strictly complied with.  In criminal
cases it holds up well enough, but when _Time_ magazine printed that a
prominent Florida socialite had been divorced by her husband (where the
fact was that she had divorced him), she sued for defamation.  At the time,
the only ground for divorce in Florida was adultery, and therefore
_Time_ was per innuendo calling her an adulteress.  The court rather
sensibly held that _Time_ and its editors, both based in New York, neither
knew nor had reason to know of this particular point of Florida law.

> Say a french author/vendor having his 
> house/business in France must conform to french laws when granting/selling.

Most jurisdictions surely apply the lex situs here.

> But when you are licensee, if the grantor is german, american, chinese, the 
> grantor country law applies.

With, or without, regard to the grantor's conflict of law rules?  (I.e.
accepting or rejecting the renvoi?)  Most U.S. contracts attempt to
contract out of the renvoi.

-- 
John Cowan <jcowan at reutershealth.com> www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com
Micropayment advocates mistakenly believe that efficient allocation of
resources is the purpose of markets.  Efficiency is a byproduct of market
systems, not their goal.  The reasons markets work are not because users
have embraced efficiency but because markets are the best place to allow
users to maximize their preferences, and very often their preferences are
not for conservation of cheap resources.  --Clay Shirkey
--
license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3