[Foundation-l] Re: Copyright and local liability

[Robert Scott Horning]

Jan Kulveit wrote:

>Hi,
>
>
>the problem is, country laws may prescribe specific requirements
>for contractual agreements, or licenses, not fullfilled by GFDL. E.g.
>-a contract must consist of an offer and an acceptation. An offer
>has to be directed (not "You,...") 
>-the acceptation is valid in the moment, when the autor recieves
>some notice about acceptation (impossible in GFDL)
>-specific requirements for licenses, e.g. written form, explicit
>mentioning the license is not payed etc.
>
>For example, in the Czech Republic, few years ago, GPL (and also
>GFDL) was probably contradicting both copyright law and contract
>laws. Now the copyright law changed and contract laws are going to 
>change, and legal situation is unclear. In practice, nobody cares
>about the law and GPL and GFDL is respected.
>
>***
>
>The safest way how to avoid legal nightmare is to route all legal
>issues to the US. 
>
>What's interesting, it would still be possible to have mirror 
>servers in Czechia under Czech law, even if the legal status of the 
>content is unclear. CZ has special law "about services of 
>information society", and part of the law explicitely exempts 
>"caching" from much of the copyright liability. AFAIK major part
>of the law was inherited from EU directives, thus it schould
>be possible to have mirror/cache/... servers in most EU countries
>without necessity to comply with their copyright laws.
>
>Jan Kulveit 
>(user:Wikimol)
>
While I would agree some portions of contract law in different countries 
might not specifically permit something like the GPL, it is still a 
protection in the sense that in those countries where the GPL or GFDL is 
not permitted that the content simply become sealed and propritary. 
 That is not an ideal situation, but it does protect people unless 
copyright is simply ignored altogether (like China.... well at least in 
the past and somewhat in the present).  I think larger problems would be 
issues like discussions regarding national socialism, images of a 
swastika, where places like Germany it is illegal (or highly regulated) 
but elsewhere you are free to talk about it.  I know similar kinds of 
laws are in France, and discussion about the Quran (Koran?) in less than 
reverent tones is illegal in most Arab countries as well.  Routing legal 
disputes over things like that to the USA simply isn't always going to 
be so easy.

BTW, version 3 of the GPL is currently being discussed at the Free 
Software Foundation, and (this is not specifically being directed at you 
Jan) if you have comments or know of legal conflicts of the GPL or GFDL 
that revisions of the license would make it easier to distribute "libre" 
content world-wide, please add some comments@ gnu.org

-- 
Robert Scott Horning