[License-review] For Approval: Convertible Free Software License, Version 1.3 (C-FSL v1.3)

[John Cowan]

On Fri, Jan 11, 2019 at 4:34 PM Rob Landley <rob at landley.net> wrote:

(I'm
>
glossing over "joint authorship" because we don't do that here, see
>
> https://www.bakerdonelson.com/avoiding-joint-pain-treatment-of-joint-works-of-authorship-conditions
> and
>
> https://www.trademarkandcopyrightlawblog.com/2015/10/first-circuit-clarifies-rights-of-co-author-of-joint-derivative-work-to-make-further-derivatives/
> and
>
> https://corporate.findlaw.com/intellectual-property/copyright-ownership-the-joint-authorship-doctrine.html
> if you're curious, but open source is careful not to go there.)
>

I, on the other hand, think that open-source collaboration goes there every
single day, and that nearly every patch committed evinces "the intention
that their contributions be merged into inseparable or interdependent parts
of a unitary whole."  And not only do I think so, I believe that Larry
Rosen, who is an actual IP lawyer, thinks so too.  Indeed, it was he who
convinced me of its truth.


> This is why filming stage plays is so hard [etc. etc. etc.]


It's hard because films are made in a "clearance culture", which is to say
a culture of fear, not because of actual legal constraints. Still
photographers take pictures of strangers without their consent every day,
and a video is nothing but a sequence of stills. (There are some exceptions
and anomalies, such as the right in California to prevent certain uses of
your image if you're a famous person, but even that doesn't extend to news
photography.)  Oddly enough, audio recordings without consent are legal or
illegal on a state-by-state basis.

--
John Cowan          http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Pour moi, les villes du Silmarillion ont plus de realite que Babylone.
                --Christopher Tolkien, as interviewed by Le Monde
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