[License-discuss] Thoughts on the subject of ethical licenses

[John Cowan]

On Mon, Mar 9, 2020 at 1:04 PM VanL <van.lindberg at gmail.com> wrote:


> The issue is not "terrorists don't care about licenses," it is that
> banning illegality is not generally considered to be an enforceable term in
> a contract/license. Illegal things are already illegal, so making them
> illegal *and* a breach of contract does not do anything extra.
>

IANAL, but that doesn't look right to me.  A contract to *do* something
illegal is of course void, but a license term that says "This license is
void if the licensee does something illegal" does not strike me as mere
flatus vocis.  Rather, it is in the nature of a morals clause, something
that has been repeatedly upheld in the cases of bad-boy/bad-girl athletes
and entertainers so that a contract employer can protect itself from
"public hatred, scorn, contempt, or ridicule".

Babe Ruth's 1922 employment contract with the New York Yankees forbade him
from drinking and from staying up late during the baseball season.  (He
refused to sign an earlier version of the contract which banned womanizing
as well.) And a mere three days ago, a jury found that one Tavis Smiley, a
talk-show host, owed his former employer PBS $1.5MM after he had been fired
on the basis of his morals clause.  PBS claimed in their countersuit to
Tavis's lawsuit for his firing, which he claimed to be racially motivated,
that the money was owed for a season of shows that Smiley had not delivered.



John Cowan          http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
All Gaul is divided into three parts: the part that cooks with lard and
goose
fat, the part that cooks with olive oil, and the part that cooks with
butter.
  --David Chessler
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