2008/8/11 Bennett Haselton bennett@peacefire.org:

I would assume that if user A grants everyone in the world a license to do X, Y, and Z, then you're allowed to submit your work to company Q which requires you to agree to terms that say "YOU give us permission to do X, Y, and Z". Even though the permission is technically not yours to give. Because, logically, if you did interpret it this way, what could possibly happen that anyone could sue for? If you grant company Q the right to do X, Y, and Z and company Q actually does one of those things, user A can't claim they were wronged, because they granted the whole world the right to do X, Y and Z anyway.

Possibly. However, I think we're at a level of theorising where it becomes important that law is not deterministic, and that the point at which you would be putting forward this reasoning would be when you were taken to court by an aggrieved copyright-holding lunatic out for blood and you were defending yourself; and the question to ask yourself would then be, "do I feel lucky?"

- d.