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I'm thankful the author did this, but there's no copyright notice or license. Obviously I can assume it's copyrighted, but it would be nice to have the explici

I'm thankful the author did this, but there's no copyright notice or license. Obviously I can assume it's copyrighted, but it would be nice to have the explicit declarations.

tptacek 14y ago
Just for whatever it's worth (I assume you know this, but for the class): with no explicit statement, the default in US and EU is "all rights reserved".
- gojomo 14y ago
  True. And yet: the author has overtly placed it in a public place normally understood to be for sharing. At the very least, people can reasonably assume an implicit permission to do the usual things that are done with Github public repositories: fork at Github, create local copies, create derivatives with the intent of sharing back to the original, etc. And, if he's using Github's free plan, that's only available for projects that are "open source", a term with a fairly well-understood meaning in our profession. So he's likely also implicitly represented to Github that whatever the formal license, it qualifies as 'open source'. The author could be confused. It could be a trap. He could probably withdraw any of these implicit permissions by taking the right explicit future steps. But in the meantime, people don't have to fear normal copying and sharing based on a default 'all rights reserved' assumption. It's probably OK, and even if the author changes his assertions later, penalties for copying during this 'implied consent' period are unlikely.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Is there something in the Github TOS that suggests that? Because otherwise I think your beliefs about people's reasonable assumptions are the opposite of true. Although I agree with you that his intentions are probably not at this point to take advantage of his copyright on the code. :)
    - gojomo 14y ago
      If the author is using the free plan, Github's 'plans and pricing' indicates that's for 'open source' projects. As far as I can tell, there's no way to turn off a 'public' Github project's download, fork, and pull request functionality. Indeed, those functions are emblematic of the service, and they're meaningless without grants to make copies and republish derivatives far beyond the legacy all-rights-reserved defaults of legislative copyright law. IANAL, but placing code on Github, where those features are mandatory and expected, looks like an overt act authorizing related copying and modification — an 'implied license' — even without the explicit grants provided by a formally-expressed open source license.
      - tptacek 14y ago
        That is definitely not how the law works. Surely we agree though that it doesn't much matter here. I don't think Bill Budge is going to sue you for porting Pinball Construction Set.
        gojomo 14y ago
        You are definitely wrong in your 'definitely' assurance. Someone absolutely can get implied permission, from either a physical property-holder or IP rightsholder, when the owner's actions (or even non-actions) are reasonably interpreted to have indicated mutual assent. or created a 'constructive agreement'. or simply waived some rights (modifying the 'all rights reserved'). Some examples of relevant legal principles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_license http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_license http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usufruct http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usufruct http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_in_fact_contract http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_in_fact_contract http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel#American_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel#American_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laches_%28equity%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laches_%28equity%29 It gets murkier in copyright law, because legislation has often been crafted to supercede common law and court precedents. But these are still potent issues; for example, Google's lawyers sought a summary judgement against Oracle on many of these 'equitable' grounds, based on Oracle's public statements and actions. Also, the idea of an 'implied license' was a central defense used by those sued by copyright troll Righthaven. (The Righthaven entity has now lost cases right and left, and is facing sanctions for its legal misconduct: http://righthavenlawsuits.com/. http://righthavenlawsuits.com/.) So it's not just that Bill Budge won't sue. It's that if he did, and asserted that his intent was always 'all rights reserved', he'd almost certainly lose. Defendants would have a strong, perhaps ironclad argument that upload to Github was implied permission for lots of copying/reuse/modification. (That is, you can't put something into a world-readable folder that by custom means "download, share and improve me" – and then assert that's not what you wanted people to do.) And that goes doubly if Budge is on the free plan, that's reserved for 'open source' projects. When informing people about the letter of copyright law, and the maximal interpretation often asserted by rightsholders and literalists/authoritarians, it's important to also communicate how copyright law is really practiced and interpreted by the courts, and reasonable people. Many of our era's emblematic companies and services -- including Github, Google, YouTube, and blogging -- absolutely depend on the more liberal, fuzzy, implied-permissions and reasonable-balances practice of copyright law.
binarycrusader 14y ago
The author has since added a MIT license to the repository. Yea!

I'm thankful the author did this, but there's no copyright notice or license. Obviously I can assume it's copyrighted, but it would be nice to have the explicit declarations.

tptacek 14y ago

gojomo 14y ago
True. And yet: the author has overtly placed it in a public place normally understood to be for sharing. At the very least, people can reasonably assume an implicit permission to do the usual things that are done with Github public repositories: fork at Github, create local copies, create derivatives with the intent of sharing back to the original, etc. And, if he's using Github's free plan, that's only available for projects that are "open source", a term with a fairly well-understood meaning in our profession. So he's likely also implicitly represented to Github that whatever the formal license, it qualifies as 'open source'. The author could be confused. It could be a trap. He could probably withdraw any of these implicit permissions by taking the right explicit future steps. But in the meantime, people don't have to fear normal copying and sharing based on a default 'all rights reserved' assumption. It's probably OK, and even if the author changes his assertions later, penalties for copying during this 'implied consent' period are unlikely.
- tptacek 14y ago
  Is there something in the Github TOS that suggests that? Because otherwise I think your beliefs about people's reasonable assumptions are the opposite of true. Although I agree with you that his intentions are probably not at this point to take advantage of his copyright on the code. :)
  - gojomo 14y ago
    If the author is using the free plan, Github's 'plans and pricing' indicates that's for 'open source' projects. As far as I can tell, there's no way to turn off a 'public' Github project's download, fork, and pull request functionality. Indeed, those functions are emblematic of the service, and they're meaningless without grants to make copies and republish derivatives far beyond the legacy all-rights-reserved defaults of legislative copyright law. IANAL, but placing code on Github, where those features are mandatory and expected, looks like an overt act authorizing related copying and modification — an 'implied license' — even without the explicit grants provided by a formally-expressed open source license.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      That is definitely not how the law works. Surely we agree though that it doesn't much matter here. I don't think Bill Budge is going to sue you for porting Pinball Construction Set.
      - gojomo 14y ago
        You are definitely wrong in your 'definitely' assurance. Someone absolutely can get implied permission, from either a physical property-holder or IP rightsholder, when the owner's actions (or even non-actions) are reasonably interpreted to have indicated mutual assent. or created a 'constructive agreement'. or simply waived some rights (modifying the 'all rights reserved'). Some examples of relevant legal principles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_license http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_license http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usufruct http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usufruct http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_in_fact_contract http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_in_fact_contract http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel#American_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel#American_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laches_%28equity%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laches_%28equity%29 It gets murkier in copyright law, because legislation has often been crafted to supercede common law and court precedents. But these are still potent issues; for example, Google's lawyers sought a summary judgement against Oracle on many of these 'equitable' grounds, based on Oracle's public statements and actions. Also, the idea of an 'implied license' was a central defense used by those sued by copyright troll Righthaven. (The Righthaven entity has now lost cases right and left, and is facing sanctions for its legal misconduct: http://righthavenlawsuits.com/. http://righthavenlawsuits.com/.) So it's not just that Bill Budge won't sue. It's that if he did, and asserted that his intent was always 'all rights reserved', he'd almost certainly lose. Defendants would have a strong, perhaps ironclad argument that upload to Github was implied permission for lots of copying/reuse/modification. (That is, you can't put something into a world-readable folder that by custom means "download, share and improve me" – and then assert that's not what you wanted people to do.) And that goes doubly if Budge is on the free plan, that's reserved for 'open source' projects. When informing people about the letter of copyright law, and the maximal interpretation often asserted by rightsholders and literalists/authoritarians, it's important to also communicate how copyright law is really practiced and interpreted by the courts, and reasonable people. Many of our era's emblematic companies and services -- including Github, Google, YouTube, and blogging -- absolutely depend on the more liberal, fuzzy, implied-permissions and reasonable-balances practice of copyright law.

binarycrusader 14y ago

The author has since added a MIT license to the repository. Yea!