5 ms·

That is not a citation. A citation provides enough specific information to independently verify that a claim comes from some authority. A citation would include

That is not a citation. A citation provides enough specific information to independently verify that a claim comes from some authority. A citation would include (at the very least) some kind of statute or clause number.

zerocrates 6y ago
The ability to terminate transfers and licenses is covered by 17 USC 203 (plus some other sections with different timetables and rules for transfers/licenses that occurred before 1978). There's an interesting and formally unresolved (because the applicable window for the earliest "copyleft" works hasn't yet arrived, for one thing) question about how this interacts with things like CC0, GPL, and more informal licenses to the public at large. The law requires the termination to fall into a specific 5-year window, with advance notice in writing (and it must be multiple years in advance), served specifically to the person whose rights are being terminated. The sheer logistics of trying to terminate a license granted to the world are therefore pretty difficult, but you could imagine termination targeting just a handful of lucrative targets. (Even then, when does a generally-available license "start"? When it's first offered? When the specific user first accesses the work? Is the timeframe "refreshed" every day the license is still on offer? This provision really wasn't written with these kinds of licenses in mind.)
- dllthomas 6y ago
  It would be amusing to formally terminate the rights of a few specific individuals to some piece of GPL code, as a sort of formal protest against whatever they're doing, requiring them to go and get the rights passed along to them again (... I assume that's how it'd work out?) from someone who still has license.
athms 6y ago
You didn't specify which parts of my comment you wanted a citation, therefore I directed you to the entire code on copyrights. These are federal statutes. The document has chapters and is easily read.

zerocrates 6y ago

The ability to terminate transfers and licenses is covered by 17 USC 203 (plus some other sections with different timetables and rules for transfers/licenses that occurred before 1978). There's an interesting and formally unresolved (because the applicable window for the earliest "copyleft" works hasn't yet arrived, for one thing) question about how this interacts with things like CC0, GPL, and more informal licenses to the public at large. The law requires the termination to fall into a specific 5-year window, with advance notice in writing (and it must be multiple years in advance), served specifically to the person whose rights are being terminated. The sheer logistics of trying to terminate a license granted to the world are therefore pretty difficult, but you could imagine termination targeting just a handful of lucrative targets. (Even then, when does a generally-available license "start"? When it's first offered? When the specific user first accesses the work? Is the timeframe "refreshed" every day the license is still on offer? This provision really wasn't written with these kinds of licenses in mind.)

dllthomas 6y ago
It would be amusing to formally terminate the rights of a few specific individuals to some piece of GPL code, as a sort of formal protest against whatever they're doing, requiring them to go and get the rights passed along to them again (... I assume that's how it'd work out?) from someone who still has license.

athms 6y ago

You didn't specify which parts of my comment you wanted a citation, therefore I directed you to the entire code on copyrights. These are federal statutes. The document has chapters and is easily read.