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> How can you possibly have a valid copyright for software in French law if all license terms are considered contract breaches? Perhaps you are confusing the c

> How can you possibly have a valid copyright for software in French law if all license terms are considered contract breaches? Perhaps you are confusing the copyright with the licence. The copyright adheres strictly to the author. He can sell it, in which case he sells the right to licence and enforce. If he licences, then he retains the copyright, and grants the licensee specific rights in exchange for specific actions. That's a licence agreement; to my mind, the word "agreement" signifies a contract. I find it a stretch to interpret a licence violation as a copyright violation.

horsawlarway 5y ago
Ok, so in the context of this case: The legal system of France lays out two different penalties for different behaviors 1. Violation of copyright/IP, which is punished based on how much gain the counterfeiter makes. 2. Violation of contract, which is punished solely on how much money the party violating the contract caused the other party to lose. So my take is still pretty firm that you have no copyright for software in France - Or (and maybe we're getting closer here) to restate: Copyright for software in France is not equal to Copyright for other intellectual property, such as art/song/performance. Since this ruling would prohibit anyone from ever getting the much more meaningful ruling that the other party is a counterfeiter, not simply a party in breach of contract, if the IP in discussion is software. In which case we could call that copyright, but it feels like a misnomer.
- Veen 5y ago
  That’s not quite right. As I understand it (IANAL etc), the same rules apply to art/song/performance as to software. The key difference is whether the misbehaviour is carried out by a licensee. Once you license a creative work to someone, whether art or software, breaches are violations of the contact, not the copyright. In contrast, if the copyright holder hasn’t granted a license, then it’s a copyright violation, not a contract breach. So software does have copyright in France, but it can’t be used for copyleft licenses in the same way as in the US. That doesn’t mean it isn’t copyright. You say you must release your software under a license. But you don’t have to make everyone in the world a potential licensee. No one is compelled to grant universal license to distribute their software. They can just decline to do so and rely on copyright laws. You’re defining copyright narrowly as “that which allows open source copyleft licenses like the GPL to work.” But that’s based on a US-centric understanding of copyright that simply doesn’t apply in France. And it’s not surprising. The GPL is a hack of the copyright system. It uses copyright to do something it wasn’t originally intended to do and is only capable of doing because of the peculiarities of the US (and other) legal systems. Hacks often don’t work outside of their original context.

horsawlarway 5y ago

Ok, so in the context of this case: The legal system of France lays out two different penalties for different behaviors 1. Violation of copyright/IP, which is punished based on how much gain the counterfeiter makes. 2. Violation of contract, which is punished solely on how much money the party violating the contract caused the other party to lose. So my take is still pretty firm that you have no copyright for software in France - Or (and maybe we're getting closer here) to restate: Copyright for software in France is not equal to Copyright for other intellectual property, such as art/song/performance. Since this ruling would prohibit anyone from ever getting the much more meaningful ruling that the other party is a counterfeiter, not simply a party in breach of contract, if the IP in discussion is software. In which case we could call that copyright, but it feels like a misnomer.

Veen 5y ago
That’s not quite right. As I understand it (IANAL etc), the same rules apply to art/song/performance as to software. The key difference is whether the misbehaviour is carried out by a licensee. Once you license a creative work to someone, whether art or software, breaches are violations of the contact, not the copyright. In contrast, if the copyright holder hasn’t granted a license, then it’s a copyright violation, not a contract breach. So software does have copyright in France, but it can’t be used for copyleft licenses in the same way as in the US. That doesn’t mean it isn’t copyright. You say you must release your software under a license. But you don’t have to make everyone in the world a potential licensee. No one is compelled to grant universal license to distribute their software. They can just decline to do so and rely on copyright laws. You’re defining copyright narrowly as “that which allows open source copyleft licenses like the GPL to work.” But that’s based on a US-centric understanding of copyright that simply doesn’t apply in France. And it’s not surprising. The GPL is a hack of the copyright system. It uses copyright to do something it wasn’t originally intended to do and is only capable of doing because of the peculiarities of the US (and other) legal systems. Hacks often don’t work outside of their original context.