Silly question: are usage restrictions covered by the OSD?

[Chris F Clark]

Quoting Chris F Clark (cfc at TheWorld.com):

me> Perhaps a clause of the OSD should read that "the license should not
me> discriminate against (or prohibit) any form of usage which is not
me> already proscribed by copyright law".  That would be a very strong
me> bound on what open source licenses can regulate.

Rick Moen replied:

> A possibly silly question of my own:  If a particular form of usage is
> already proscribed by copyright law, then wouldn't it be pretty much
> pointless for a licence to "discriminate against or prohibit" it?  

1) By usage I ment something more general.  In particular, I was
   thinking of the 5, 6, or so specific rights reserved to a copyright
   holder in US law.  I was not aware that EU law also reserved the
   right of executing a progam to the copyright owner also, which is
   certainly a relevant and important consideration.  My intent by
   proposing the clause was to make certain that a license acted only
   as a "grant" type license.

2) I think because a license might be used in locations other than the
   author's own, some authors might want to specifically restrict that
   right in their license, despite the fact that such a clause would
   be unnecessary in their home jurisdiction.  For example, the GPL
   specifically restricts ones right of redistribution, in the US that
   restriction acts more as a grant, because in the US one cannot
   normally redistribute works that are not ones own.  However, if we
   went to some other location, we might find a jurisdiction that did
   not make redistribution a priviledged right reserved to the author
   and the GPL would then act solely as a restriction, not a grant.

I'm not sure I can clarify what I meant without making my idea
US-law-centric.  In particular, I think a license ought to grant the
recipients right to "use" the work in the manner that such works are
normally used.  That is programs should grant the right to be run,
documents should grant the right to be read, pictures whould grant the
right to be viewed, recorded songs the right to be heard, printed
songs the right to be sung, etc.

-Chris
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