August 16, 2011

Bradley and Karen play and comment on a talk recording of Aaron Williamson's and Karen's presentation at OSCON 2011, entitled Legal Basics for Developers.

Running time: 00:53:53.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:33)

• Bradley mentioned the birthday attack when explaining to Karen how likely it might be that the number of the show might match the number of the day. (01:38)
• This show is a recording of Aaron and Karen's OSCON 2011 talk, Legal Basics for Developers. (02:20)

Segment 1 (05:53)

• The slides for the Legal Basics for Developers are available to follow along with the recording (05:53)

Segment 2 (49:36)

• Richard Fontana gave at a talk at OSCON as well, which was recorded, and Karen and Bradley have asked for his permission to play it. (50:45)
• Bradley asked folks to ping Richard on identi.ca to ask him to allow us to use his audio on the oggcast. (51:05)

Tags: bkuhn, karen, non-commercial, sflc, oscon, fontana, creative-commons, aaronw, patents, copyrights, trademarks, public domain, license compatibility, compliance, non-profits, gnome, questions, conferences, gpl

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November 9, 2010

Karen and Bradley discuss Stormy Peters' departure from the GNOME Foundation, an issue of deep confusion regarding copyright licensing, and references to Spock in a recent court decision.

Running time: 00:39:56.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:35)

• Bradley confirmed the entire show is licensed CC-By-SA 3.0 (02:30)
• Stormy Peters is leaving the position of GNOME Foundation's Executive Director. (04:10)
• The GNOME Advisory Board is a group of for-profit and non-profit organizations that meet regularly to give advice to GNOME Foundation. (04:34)
• Stormy is going to a job at the Mozilla Foundation. (09:10)
• You don't have to be a developer to become a member of the GNOME Foundation. (09:57)
• Bradley mentioned that he did an FSF booth at COMDEX Chicago in early 2001 (which Bradley incorrectly called CES Chicago in the recording). (12:20)

Segment 1 (15:43)

• A LiveJournal post introduced an interesting issue of copyright confusion. (16:30)
• Karen mentioned there was discussion in other fora other than the original LiveJournal post, such as on the NY Frunch (Free Culture Lunch) mailing list and, since then, on NPR. (17:24)
• Bradley mentioned Fanzines, wondering if there are still fanzines. (18:57)
• Karen pointed out that both copyright infringement and plagiarism were at issue here. (20:25)
• Bradley is quite upset about the idea that people confuse public domain with FaiF licensing or any other actual license terms. (21:00)
• Karen notes that if you don't see a license, you have to assume it's all rights reserved. (23:10)
• Bradley described a Slashdot story that linked to a Techdirt article. (30:29)
• A footnote in the concurrence is what mentions Star Trek (33:03) .
• Bradley mentioned a mediocre novel he read in the 1990s called Brain Storm by Richard Dooling. (33:26)

Tags: bkuhn, karen, copyrights, Stormy Peters, public domain, Star Trek

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March 16, 2010

Aaron, Karen and Bradley discuss issues around the public domain and how it relates to copyright in general and copyrights on software in particular.

Running time: 00:58:13.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:36)

• Aaron, Bradley, and Karen consider Aaron's status as a “special host”. Bradley wondered if that meant Aaron hosted a parasite. (Aaron subsequently got sick two days after recording, and is now playing the role of a biological “special host”.)
• Bradley joked that copyright never expires in the USA due to retroactive extensions enacted by Congress. Aaron noted the Sony Bono 1998 Copyright Extension Act was the most recent act to do this. (05:47, 06:28)
• Public domain dedications are relatively easy in the USA, but moral rights issues in European jurisdictions make public domain dedications difficult. (17:19)
• The Berne Convention respects the issue of public domain, insofar as something definitely in the public domain in one country doesn't fall under copyright restrictions in other countries, but doesn't do much more than that regarding public domain. (17:30)
• Creative Commons wrote CC0 to attempt to harmonize public domain dedication around the world. (18:53)
• Bradley pointed out that the “WTFPL” license FAQ points out that it exists in part because of difficulties in putting things in the public domain in some jurisdictions. (25:36)
• Karen looked up the word merchantability in Black's Law Dictionary. (30:07)

Segment 1 (29:52)

• Bradley was apparently wrong, saleable is a word, and some few online dictionaries say sailable is a word (30:30)
• Aaron mentioned the Typography for Lawyers website, which has a good section on using all-caps text. (33:27)
• Bradley encouraged use of \textsc{} in LaTeX instead of writing in all caps, but laments that lawyers he's talked to about it can't be convinced. (34:30)
• Black's Law Dictionary says public domain is the rule; intellectual property is the exception. Bradley lamented that he wishes that were actually true. (35:17)

Tags: bkuhn, karen, copyrights, aaronw, public domain