As we've said many times here, the normal community understanding on contribution licensing is inbound=outbound, which is to say that contributors agree for their contributions to be licensed under the project's existing licence.

In the case of copyleft licences, as the linked question says, this is actually a requirement of the licence. In the case of the permissive licences like MIT, however, it's just a community understanding. Unless the project required a CLA from you, you could make an argument that you never licensed your contributions to the project at all, but I'd expect it to be a hard, uphill business to convince a judge of that (indeed, as Bart points out (thank you, Bart!), given GitHub's embedding of in=out in their TOS, it will likely be next to impossible).

But the project is completely entitled to change to a proprietary licence, and unless you can convince a judge that you never agreed to licence your contributions, you have no right to demand they stop using your contribution. One of the many advantages of copyleft licensing is that, once contributions have been accepted, the project can no longer unilaterally relicense. The permissive licences don't give the same protection, and this is generally understood, so what they've done, though not nice, is neither unlawful nor unethical.

One thing you can do is to take the copy of the MIT-licensed source you've found, and make sure it's available from your website (or at least, not solely from your github account). You have every right to do that, and as the search engines pick it up, you may hope that their proprietary-licensed version is supplanted by the free version.

Months later, according to the SFC, AVM provided all the relevant source code and scripts, but the suit continued. AVM ultimately paid Steck's attorney fee. The case proved, once again, that not only are source code requirements real, but the LGPL also demands freedom, despite its "Lesser" name, and that source code needs to be useful in making real changes to firmware—in German courts, at least.

"The favorable result of this lawsuit exemplifies the power of copyleft—granting users the freedom to modify, repair, and secure the software on their own devices," the SFC said in a press release. "Companies like AVM receive these immense benefits themselves. This lawsuit reminded AVM that downstream users must receive those very same rights under copyleft.". //

At the top is perhaps the best-known case in tech circles, the Linksys WRT54G conflict from 2003. While the matter was settled before a lawsuit was filed, negotiations between Linksys owner Cisco and a coalition led by the Free Software Foundation, publisher of the GPL and LGPL, made history. It resulted in the release of all the modified and relevant GPL source code used in its hugely popular blue-and-black router.

The backstory, such as it exists from reports and retrospectives, is that Cisco bought Linksys, Linksys outsourced certain chipset development to Broadcom, and Broadcom outsourced firmware development to an overseas developer. Everybody up the chain ended up with a lawsuit once people started looking.

Cisco made history yet again in 2007 when it was the first entity to be actually sued by the FSF over GPL violations, which started in 2003 and continued to come up with new hardware products. Cisco settled the case with the FSF in 2009, making a donation to the FSF and appointing a Free Software Director at the company to keep track of its licensing obligations.

According to the SFC, GPL/LGPL lawsuits have tended to focus on copyright enforcement, but Steck's claim was about user rights. "There is now no doubt that both GPL and LGPL mandate the device owner's ability to make changes to the software in the flash memory so those changes persist across reboots," the SFC said. //

Denver Gingerich, director of compliance for the SFC, told The Register that this is the first time to his knowledge that the LGPL has been successfully litigated.

"The AVM lawsuit is an excellent example of how users can make practical use of the courts to receive the freedoms owed to them by the companies that sell devices to them," he said. //

50 mins
rgjnk
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Re: Stretching
The LGPL might mean the manufacturer have to publish their modifications to the source code but that's still not "mandate the device owner's ability to make changes to the software in the flash memory so those changes persist across reboots"

The GPL license doesn't even come close to what's claimed there, especially what's very specifically described.

They apparently claim a right to be able to reflash a device and the GPL has nothing to do with that. An implemented right to repair may grant that in various forms (often in reality very limited by other legislative concerns) but the GPL is about the 'source code' only and nothing more.

I can only hope something has got lost in translation from German and they didn't actually say anything about a mandate at all. //

hr
PyLETS
Choice of jurisdiction and distributors
In this case a German developer went though German courts to get redress from a German company. Not all software access claims will be so easy in relation to local law where the manufacturer operates. However, for consumer electronics containing free software with enforceable licenses, these apply to distributors also, and effective cease and desist demands against distributors until conditions are met will force the manufacturers hand if distributors decline to distribute the offending product otherwise.

Sorry, no, you can’t just digitize, share copyrighted books without permission. //

The San Francisco-based Internet Archive has been scanning printed books and distributing them online – without the consent of copyright holders – through a process called Controlled Digital Lending (CDL). The idea is that the Internet Archive can lend readers one digital copy as a proxy for each physical book in its control without violating the law.

That idea has been rejected by US courts, first by Judge John Koeltl from the Southern District of New York in March 2023, and now by Second Circuit Judges Steven J. Menashi, Beth Robinson, and Maria Araújo Kahn.

The appeals court decision [PDF] states, "This appeal presents the following question: Is it 'fair use' for a nonprofit organization to scan copyright-protected print books in their entirety, and distribute those digital copies online, in full, for free, subject to a one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio between its print copies and the digital copies it makes available at any given time, all without authorization from the copyright-holding publishers or authors?"

The answer from the US justice system so far is no, it's not fair use.

The appeals court ordered a new trial on damages because it said the $46.8 million award was too high, but affirmed the lower court's finding that Grande is liable for contributory copyright infringement. //

Back in 2020, we wrote about the voir dire questions that record labels intended to ask prospective jurors in their case against Grande. One of those questions was, "Have you ever read or visited Ars Technica or TorrentFreak?" //

The 5th Circuit remanded the case to the district court for a new trial on damages. Record labels can expect a lower payout because the appeals court said they can't obtain separate damages awards for multiple songs on the same album.

"The district court determined that each of Plaintiffs’ 1,403 sound recordings that was infringed entitled Plaintiffs to an individual statutory damages award," the 5th Circuit said. "Grande contends that the text of the Copyright Act requires a different result: Whenever more than one of those recordings appeared on the same album, Plaintiffs are entitled to only one statutory damages award for that album, regardless of how many individual recordings from the album were infringed. Grande has the better reading of the text of the statute."

The Copyright Act says that "all the parts of a compilation or derivative work constitute one work," the court said. In the Grande case, record labels sought damages for each song but conceded that "each album constitutes a compilation." //

Cox told the Supreme Court that ISPs "have no way of verifying whether a bot-generated notice is accurate. And no one can reliably identify the actual individual who used a particular Internet connection for an illegal download. The ISP could connect the IP address to a particular subscriber's account, but the subscriber in question might be a university or a conference center with thousands of individual users on its network, or a grandmother who unwittingly left her Internet connection open to the public. Thus, the subscriber is often not the infringer and may not even know about the infringement."

Cox asked the Supreme Court to decide whether the 4th Circuit "err[ed] in holding that a service provider can be held liable for 'materially contributing' to copyright infringement merely because it knew that people were using certain accounts to infringe and did not terminate access, without proof that the service provider affirmatively fostered infringement or otherwise intended to promote it." //

Team Tardigrade Ars Centurion
4y
360
This should be fun. How long before someone accuses, oh I don't know, a hospital, state legislature, or The 5th Circuit of piracy to have them shut down? I'm assuming that systems like that become automated and that any accusation will result in being disconnected. //

Waco Ars Tribunus Militum
7y
1,674
Subscriptor

hillspuck said:
I'm struggling to find another solution than "lol copyright owners just have to suck it up and let people pirate all they want." That solution never flies with the people who own the politicians.
If they want to prove piracy, let them prove piracy. It still doesn't mean you get to cut off a utility necessary for modern life.

If they can't (or won't spend the money to do so) then piracy clearly isn't as big of a deal as they make it. //

mangoslice Smack-Fu Master, in training
9y
64
Subscriptor++
You are assuming there’s never even an accusation of piracy for an IP address that is tied to you. One of the issues here is that if a corporation says and claims you are committing piracy against them then ISPs would be compelled disconnect you.

No due process. //

Socks Mingus Ars Scholae Palatinae
5y
631
"The evidence at trial demonstrated that Grande had a simple measure available to it to prevent further damages to copyrighted works (i.e., terminating repeat infringing subscribers), but that Grande never took it," the 5th Circuit ruling said.

Does this mean we get to cut off access to the legal system any time a company and their affiliated law firms file a false DMCA claim? //

cyberfunk Ars Scholae Palatinae
12y
938
I think the decision headline here is really

"5th Circuit rules ISP should have to be bound by Jury Verdict​"

It's misleading to say that the 5th circuit here actually found in favor of Rightscorp per se.. they found that there was no credible reason to invalidate the jury verdict. In my eyes those are very different matters.

Yea, it's not the outcome I want either, but we do ourselves a disservice painting this as a bunch of "bad conservative judges doing the thing we don't like". I just don't see this decision as particularly partisan nor wildly unreasonable, legally speaking. It is, in fact, BETTER to have a jury rather than a bunch of judges deciding on such matters as it's a more direct representation of the popular power rather than the judiciary.

Yes, yes, the juries arn't always experts on matters of law, but the system is setup to work with a judge there advising them on such matters.. but the power rests with the common man here, not some set of judges.

I should say that this means we need to change the laws around copyright / DMCA notice abuse and procedure here rather than yell into the wind that some judges didn't do what we wanted (regardless of political orientation). Yelling at the judges for enforcing the laws on the books is silly and counterproductive.

martyf Smack-Fu Master, in training
15y
63
You can't buy digital content.
You can only buy physical goods.
You never bought the digital content.

I think it should be illegal to use the word "buy" for a digital content license.

Why can't you buy digital content? Well, I read over the comments, and I was very surprised to see that nobody here has mentioned the fact that "First Sale Doctrine" does not apply to digital media. (Wikipedia).

In simplest terms, if you buy a copyrighted work in physical form, you can sell the physical form, rent it, loan it, whatever, all you want. You just can't make and sell a copy of the work that the form conveys.

The first sale doctrine does not apply to digital content (media and software) unless the seller of the digital content specifically grants you a license to sell the digital content (and, with some exceptions for software resellers, nobody does this.)

A streaming media company like Redbox, Amazon, Apple, whatever, rarely/never owns all the content they "sell" - they have a contract to be allowed to sell licenses to the content they have licensed in large and expensive deals. It's licenses all the way down.

At no time are the intellectual property rights to the content sold in this chain of sales.

When you "buy" digital content, you are buying nothing more than a license for unlimited replay of a media item, using technologies the seller deems appropriate for the replay of their content. That is all you're buying. A license. And the license may or may not transfer to another party in a bankruptcy. And the license may be revoked as a result of a dispute between the holder of the intellectual property rights and the distributor of the playback licenses.

But there is no good answer to this problem that conforms to the notion of copyright law as it is. Ultraviolet gave it a try, but it got so convoluted that it collapsed under the weight of it's own terms and conditions.

The economics of digital content are broken. The best we seem to come up with are advertising and subscriptions, sales are not really possible. Pirating and Streaming work really well at everything but getting the people who made the content paid.

Pirating content - that is obtaining a copyrighted work without the authorization of the copyright holder is, under numerous laws, theft. You can't just declare, "they didn't sell it to me, so I can just take it" and pretend there was no violation of the laws.

But, to be clear, I think that using the terminology of a sales transaction - specifically the word "Buy" - for streaming content is, put simply, fraudulent, misleading, etc etc...

Yes, in legal terms, I have "bought" a "right" that can be revoked - for example, I can buy a fishing license, but that license can be taken away for various reasons - but I think that most normal people do not see the purchase of a movie for their kids as something that can be taken away.

I'm not sure what the answer is here. An optical disc does not cost the rights holder or distributor anything once the physical object is sold; it does not matter if the seller goes out of business. Streaming media has perpetual costs that rise. If revenue does not offset the costs of the petabytes of storage and bandwidth needed to operate a well-rounded media library, it just vanishes. Even transferring it to the public domain isn't economically viable because of the costs needed to keep the media online.

In Star Trek, they allude to the huge economic disruptions caused to society by free energy, we're having a similar, smaller disruption to the "media" sector.

Appeals court decision potentially reversing publishers' suit may come this fall. //

The Internet Archive (IA) went before a three-judge panel Friday to defend its open library's controlled digital lending (CDL) practices after book publishers last year won a lawsuit claiming that the archive's lending violated copyright law. //

"It's not unlawful for a library to lend a book it owns to one patron at a time," Gratz said IA told the court. "And the advent of digital technology doesn't change that result. That's lawful. And that's what librarians do." //

IA has argued that because copyright law is intended to provide equal access to knowledge, copyright law is better served by allowing IA's lending than by preventing it. They're hoping the judges will decide that CDL is fair use, reversing the lower court's decision and restoring access to books recently removed from the open library. //

dogbertat Smack-Fu Master, in training
9y
66
Subscriptor++

chilldude22 said:
I’ve never thought or heard of this copyright interpretation before. How accurate is this description, both in law and intent? I always just assumed we’re in America and any rules benefit the powerful by default.

I think it's accurate, although I think the pendulum has swung to far toward commercial interests in the last 50 years so it isn't always apparent. Copyright is intended to serve the commonweal, not specifically the creator, by establishing the right for a limited time monopoly on works in order to incentivize creation. "The utilitarian aim of the Intellectual Property Clause is to maximize scientific and artistic progress. It does so by attempting to balance the incentives it provides for innovation, against the chilling effects that limiting access to writings and discoveries may have on novel thought." (Cornell Legal Information Institute)//

Tempus --)------- Ars Tribunus Militum
20y
2,675
Subscriptor++

BrianB_NY said:
Internet Archive wants you to believe that they can buy one copy and then "lend" it to everyone around the world, and that this is just like a library. But that isn't a fair analogy. In the tangible book arena, libraries buy many copies of books, creating sales of the books for the publisher. So people get the benefit of borrowing and both the author and publisher get paid for their work, so they can create new books.

You seem to be under the impression that other libraries don’t do lending of digital works and e-books, and that the internet archive policies allow lending a given work to more people at a time than they have purchased copies. Neither of those things are true. //

dogbertat Smack-Fu Master, in training
9y
66
Subscriptor++

BrianB_NY said:
Internet Archive wants you to believe that they can buy one copy and then "lend" it to everyone around the world, and that this is just like a library. But that isn't a fair analogy. In the tangible book arena, libraries buy many copies of books, creating sales of the books for the publisher. So people get the benefit of borrowing and both the author and publisher get paid for their work, so they can create new books.

But that's not how the Internet Archive works. They practice what is called Controlled Digital Lending (CDL). They take a physical copy, scan that particular copy, then make it available for checkout. While it is checked out, no one else can borrow it, just like a physical library. So while the title is available to everyone to try to check out, only that one copy can be (i.e., one physical book; one digital lending available). If you see multiple titles, it's because multiple physical copies of that book are held by the Internet Archives.

Libraries don't have to buy specially licensed physical books. They can (and sometime do) buy it off Amazon and put it on the shelf (although they usually use other suppliers). For some reason, the publishers think that libraries need specially licensed digital books. These cost much more than the digital copy you would get from Amazon or elsewhere. And they can't even buy the digital book in perpetuity like you can, but only for a limited number checkouts. So the Internet Archive is testing this saying, 'Hey, I can scan the book I own and lend it so long as I don't lend more than the copies I own.". //

The only reason the publishers are fighting this is that library-licensed-ebooks are WAY MORE PROFITABLE than the normal ebook (or book!), for absolutely no reason, other than that the whole "license, not ownership" thing that's happened over the last couple decades allows the publishers to do it.

That part is spot on. Since the law treats eBooks as computer programs, suddenly all of the things that publishers could not do with physical copies (such as sell books with "licenses" forbidding resale) can now be done. So publishers can limit the number of copies that can be purchased, and have the licenses expire after a certain number of circulations and/or certain time periods, and, oh, by the way, hold back sales of "library edition" eBooks until months after publication of their physical and other eBook copies. That is why CDL is such a threat to the publishing model.

Creative works may not have intellectual property protections for a number of reasons. In most cases, the rights have expired or have been forfeited. Basically, no one holds the exclusive rights to these works, meaning that living artists today can sample and build off those works legally without asking anyone’s permission to do so.

That’s why the New York Public Library (NYPL) has been reviewing the U.S. Copyright Office’s official registration and renewals records for creative works whose copyrights haven’t been renewed, and have thus been overlooked as part of the public domain.

The books in question were published between 1923 and 1964, before changes to U.S. copyright law removed the requirement for rights holders to renew their copyrights. According to Greg Cram, associate general counsel and director of information policy at NYPL, an initial overview of books published in that period shows that around 65 to 75 percent of rights holders opted not to renew their copyrights.

But corporate mega-publishers want purchasing a book to be like renting a movie or streaming an album. //

Buying a book should be no different from buying an apple. When you buy an apple, the farmer can’t show up in your kitchen later and decide your time is up, and you’ve got to pay for it again. It’s yours forever—to eat, or paint in a still life, or cut up for a kid’s snack. And thanks to the first sale doctrine of copyright law, codified by Congress in 1909, the books on your shelves are yours forever, too, in exactly the same way your apple is; you’re free to read them (or not), loan them to friends, or sell them to a used bookshop, without restriction. Copyright law balances the public good—our collective right to access information—with the rights it grants to authors and inventors.

Publishers can’t demand more money for the paper books you’ve already bought, but the technology for copying and distributing books has evolved a lot since 1909. So four titanic corporate publishers are currently in court, insisting on the effective right to barge in and demand multiple, recurring payments for digital books–like they do for digital movies, music, and software–and they want to exercise that same power over the books in libraries.

This threat to the ownership of books is what makes the ongoing publishers’ lawsuit against the Internet Archive politically dangerous, and in an altogether different way from earlier challenges and amendments to copyright law. At a time of increasing book bannings and attacks on libraries, public schools and universities, it is not safe for democracy, or for our cultural posterity, to leave an “on/off” switch for library books in the hands of corporate publishers. //

As I’ve argued before, the lawsuit hinges on the question of whether ebooks are books, subject to the existing laws governing the sale of books, or whether the publishers can redefine ebooks as temporary, rental-only media–a new class of unownable goods, like streaming-only films from Disney or subscription-only software from Microsoft. But libraries must have the option to buy and own their books–all their books, including ebooks–and own them absolutely, like an apple. //

In the summer of 2020, Hachette, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Wiley accused the Internet Archive of “mass-scale copyright infringement” because of the way the Internet Archive’s Open Library loans its ebooks to patrons. Instead of renting their ebooks from publishers, the Internet Archive scans them from the paper books it owns, stores the paper originals, and loans each scan out to only one patron at a time, a common library practice known as Controlled Digital Lending (CDL). Following the reasoning of expert copyright lawyers and library scholars over the last twelve years, the Internet Archive, along with hundreds of other libraries and archival institutions, maintains that CDL is a fair and logical way to preserve traditional library practices for the digital world. //

The publishers’ objective had been to forbid the Open Library to loan any of their in-copyright books as ebooks. That was the explicit request in the original complaint. But not even this industry-friendly judge was willing to go that far; he sided with the Internet Archive’s interpretation of the decision instead. For now, the Open Library will have to stop loaning only those ebooks for which the publishers are offering their own “competing” ebooks for license. In other words, the order relies solely on the argument that the Open Library is harming the publishers’ revenues from ebooks, a distinction that seems to go to the heart of the dispute. //

The publishers shouldn’t be able to pick and choose the bits of copyright law they want to abide by; as we’ve noted, copyright law balances the public good with commercial rights. If publishers’ ebook revenues are protected by the extant provisions of copyright law protecting rights holders, then, presumably, readers and libraries should also be protected. The Internet Archive, and all libraries, should have the same protections under the first sale doctrine that have always allowed them to preserve and lend books to readers.

The Amazon Kindle is an ebook reading computer that poses very serious dangers to society. When you purchase a Kindle, you are subject to Amazon's Digital Restriction Management (DRM), a system designed to take away rights you would typically have when reading a book.

Your basic rights to share, sell, or donate a book are subject to fights with Amazon over the legal and technological restrictions they try to impose. If you try to exercise these rights anyway, you might be violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) -- which could bring severe criminal penalties -- and Amazon can try to revoke your ability to use all the books you've bought.

After you read a physical book, you can give it to a friend or sell it. Not so with a Kindle book. You can donate a physical book to a library -- an institution whose purpose is to continue sharing it for as long as possible. The Kindle's DRM, however, is designed explicitly to prevent sharing and the public benefit that institutions like libraries provide.[1]

Amazon has a web page about e-book lending, which explains that only certain "lendable" books ("lendability" being determined by the publisher) can be lent at most one time, only within the United States, for a period of exactly 14 days. That's a pathetic (and failed) attempt to replicate what was always a very natural aspect of printed books.

Internet reader's rights

Some people think that every Internet user is a copyright violator. Downloading a document means making a copy of it, they say; and copying generally isn't legal without the author's permission. They argue about whether making material available through FTP or HTTP or USENET grants some sort of ``implied license'' to download the material---or whether an author can demand payment for the reader's copies.

Other people advocate a much simpler theory. When an author tells his FTP server to send a document to anyone who asks, he is the one making copies. In legal jargon, the author's command to the computer is the ``proximate cause'' of the copying. The reader is merely requesting a copy, not making it.

I don't know which of these theories will succeed in court. I also don't think you should have to care. So I promise I won't sue you for copyright violation for downloading documents from my server.

Does it bother you that this should even be an issue? Check out Richard Stallman's essay on The Right to Read.