> I cannot, however, tell you that you can’t put the book on the same bookshelf as that of my rival, or that you can’t read the book while flying a particular airline I dislike, or that you aren’t allowed to read the book and also work for a company that competes with mine.
Copyright is just that, copyright. It's not readright, useright, flyright or workforright.
The license for foo can say "by copying foo, you affirm your acceptance of the following conditions: …" and if you do copy foo and nothing else gives you the right to copy it, then those conditions are what you must've accepted, right? Of course you may argue the point, but that's the theory.
However, if what you do is use foo or fly with KLM, not copy foo, and don't affirm your acceptance by other means (such as signing a document), then copyright doesn't apply.
EDIT: And even if it does apply, it's not clear to me that what it applies to is the non-copying bit. If copying and flying with KLM are incompatible, then it's not clear to me that copyright can ban the latter.
That's not about copyright actually. The license is a contract, and you decide to sign it or not - by deciding to use the software or not. The contract in theory may include any restrictions you can imagine. There are in practice some restrictions on that restrictions by some laws in some countries in some aspects, but rarely about KLM.
Copyright license and contract are not (necessary) the same thing. An important related fact is that contract breach is generally less penalised than copyright infringement.
Nope, copyright also covers public performance of the copyrighted work. And that's exactly the part of IaaS or SaaS services that's so controversial lately.
I'm unaware of any case law establishing that using software to provide a service constitutes "public performance" as defined in copyright law. Got a citation?
I've heard that the drafters of AGPL wanted to "synthesize" a nonexistent public performance right. But I'm not aware of any US case law interpreting 17 USC 106(4) that way.
This is not what I said, so could you please not put words in my mouth? It's about statutory provision, not just case law. And it's not about "using" a copyrighted work to provide a service, but when the core of what's being "provided" consists in the copyrighted work being 'acted' or 'played', to paying customers (the statute itself exempts performance that does not occur for pay, nor for commercial purposes), in a way that these customers can readily perceive (but that need not in any way result in a 'copy' of the work being conveyed - copy and public performance are distinct rights under the law!)
Maybe. However it's the wrong analogy. Open source licenses are just that--licenses that specify conditions for use of the software including running it, building on it, adapting it, etc.
As such open source licenses can impose a wide range of conditions for use. Patent detente is a common term in OSS licenses, which demonstrates that such licenses are not just another form of copyright. [0] If you violate the term(s) you lose the right to run the software and may be liable for fees under a different license structure. Companies end up paying for this sort of thing all the time.
There's no particular legal reason why you cannot impose the sort of conditions that MongoDB or Confluent have added to their licenses. We can argue whether they are good for particular communities, or whether they are wise for the companies involved. But my guess is that the terms will largely stand up in a court of law as long as the companies involved can demonstrate the terms are reasonable and they have copyrights on the code involved.
I suggested making them copyright licenses and contracts simultaneously. Anything copyright doesnt cover goes into the contract. More, cheaper lawyers should be able to understand it.
I think I read here one court already ruled the software licenses are both types of law in action. That's a start. :)
you can’t put the book on the same bookshelf as that of my rival
seems part of
the right to communicate to the public the performance of such works,
so it seems an author can forbid a shop to do this. I assume the performance of the work is the reading of the book here.
This would imply a user may put the books on the same shelf at home, unless that user takes a picture of it and put that picture on the Internet for everyone to see. This would be insane, but in my experience a strict reading of copyright law gets insane quickly, so in practice you'll need to convince a judge of the merit of the case.
The second one:
you can’t read the book while flying a particular airline
seems to be a right of the reader that can't be blocked . Unless you start to read it aloud for everyone of the plane. Translating, etc... is a protected right, so a copyright holder might forbid reading the book on a plane if you are doing the reading as preparation for a translation etc...
And that's only the Berne convention. Isn't copyright nice.
Really?