Unilateral permissions in license law.

[jcowan at reutershealth.com]

daniel wallace scripsit:

> A unilateral permission can be granted only for something in which the
> grantor has some legal right. A grantor's unilateral permission by it's
> very definition can have no effect on the exclusive rights of another
> person distinct from the grantor.

Very true.

> When dealing with derivative works, a unilateral permission from an
> authorizing author can have no effect on the newly vested copyright
> for the new material added by the modifying author. 

Fortunately, no copyleft license attempts to do this.  The mechanism instead
is to grant permission to *create* the derivative work only on the condition
that the derivative work's author distribute the derivative work (if at all)
only under the copyleft license.  Failure to do so is not a breach of
contract, since there is none, but it *is* copyright infringement, since the
condition was not met and the derivative work was not lawfully created.

Do you see the cat yet?

-- 
John Cowan  jcowan at reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com
"If I have seen farther than others, it is because I am surrounded by dwarves."
        --Murray Gell-Mann
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