Why the GPL is invalid.

BSD Protector bsdprotector at yahoo.com
Fri Feb 13 00:24:30 UTC 2004


--- daniel wallace <danw6144 at insightbb.com> wrote:

> Author A and Author B are in contractual "privity".
Author A approached Author B with a GPL license and
Author B said to Author A, "I accept the GPL and agree
to its terms." There was a "meeting of the minds" so
Author A and Author B are in "privity"... they are not
strangers to each other (in the legal sense).

This is the origin of the fallacy of the whole thing.
Meeting of the minds, agreement or anything like that
is absolutely NOT REQUIRED. All that is required is
that ALL PERMISSIONS EXIST AND ALL CONDITIONS ARE MET.

Example: AIX. It contains derivative code of System V
(owner SCO, nah Novell, plus IBM of the modifications)
and heaps of other stuff, all from third party
vendors. Do all those people need to form a contract
for AIX to be distributed? Absolutely not - IBM needs
to have permission from all of them, that is all.

Now think about section 301 clearly. It says that
copyrighted works and the exclusive rights "are
governed exclusively by this title". If the Act
required other legislation, especially state level, to
be enforced for what it exclusively governs, it would
effectively preempt itself.

The Act either gives powers to license or it doesn't.
It's that simple. The wording of section 106 is clear
- it does.

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