Posted on 08/17/2008 7:36:30 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley
 Giving up some rights means you still have protection under the law
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Advocates of open source software have hailed a court ruling protecting its use even though it is given away free.
The US federal appeals court move overturned a lower court decision involving free software used in model trains that a hobbyist put online.
The court has now said conditions of an agreement called the Artistic Licence were enforceable under copyright law.
"For non-lawgeeks, this won't seem important but this is huge," said Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig.
"In non-technical terms, the Court has held that free licences set conditions on the use of copyrighted work. When you violate the condition, the licence disappears, meaning you're simply a copyright infringer.
"This is a very important victory."
Copyright infringement
According to details outlined in the ruling, Robert Jacobsen had written and then released code under an Artistic Licence. This meant anyone using that free code had to attribute the author, highlight the original source of the files and explain how the code had been modified.
Mr Jacobsen, who manages open source software group Java Model Railroad Interface, accused commercial software developer Matthew Katzer and his company of ignoring the terms of the Artistic Licence when they took his code and used it to develop commercial software products for trains.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
fyi
fyi
Jeez; a US Court keeping up with technology!
You’d think it would be common sense: it’s my copyrighted stuff and you can’t redistribute it without my permission. But no some idiotic lower court thought it was a contract. I’m glad saner and more informed minds prevailed.
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