[Foundation-l] Licensing interim update

[Petr Kadlec]

2009/2/10 geni <geniice na gmail.com>:
> Yeah that argument might work in about 1950. Actual real world
> experience suggests that it doesn't work. The first problem you have
> is that content doesn't stay in the same format if left to itself. For
> example what format is this:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Government_hospitalityreduced.png
>
> It was originally published in a magazine. The physical version that
> was actually scanned is from a punch annual. It is now an electronic
> document. Could be any number of things tomorrow (punch cartoons are
> popular in history textbooks for example).
>
> The same pictures may quite legitimately be used in books, on
> t-shirts, on calendars, on posters and on websites. Any license that
> can't cope with this is living in the wrong century.

Maybe the copyright laws are living in the wrong century… According to
the Czech copyright law, the abovementioned image (were it not public
domain due to its age) could not be distributed on the Internet, even
if the original author licensed it under a free license back then (if
free licenses existed back then, of course), because Internet was not
known at the time. Article 46, paragraph 2 of the Czech Copyright Act
[1] forbids (expressis verbis) the author to grant authorization for
*unknown future uses* in a license contract. There is no legal way (in
the Czech Republic) you could permit distribution of your work in a
hyper-sci-fi-virtual-reality-holograph-version that is gonna be
invented ten years from now in a license you are granting now, free or
not.

-- [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]]

[1] See e.g. http://www.wipo.int/clea/en/text_html.jsp?lang=en&id=962#JD__Toc48037811