[kwlug disc.] Linux Magazine

Mon Mar 19 12:53:33 EST 2007

Cedric, that's an interesting concept, one that I've actually chewed 
over myself without a good resolution.  If a work is out of copyright 
due to it's age, you can duplicate/distribute the work.  But you're 
saying that this secondary distribution can't then be copied directly?

You'll have noticed some threads here recently by me about scanning.  I 
buy up antique books on various topics that are out of copyright.  I 
scan them and make them available online.  While the intent is to allow 
(almost) everyone unfettered access to them I suspect at some point some 
nefarious scraper sites will scrape all my hard work, and republish it 
with advertising (hard work being defined as many, many hours scanning 
books in, buying scanners, ocr software, hand building web pages of 
tables of contents, etc).

Cedric Puddy wrote:
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> My understanding of the GPL is that individual distros may well free 
> and clear, but that simply ripping the CD as whole might in some 
> small, but valid, way violate LM's copyright (let's say, for example, 
> that they wrote a README and put it in the root of the disk, in which 
> they discussed the pros-and-cons of the various distros).
>
> They would be within their rights (though, perhaps arguably not their 
> senses) to say "All Rights Reserved" with respect to that bit, and 
> bitwise copying the whole CD would then be blocked.
>
> If there is no value-add whatsoever, and it's just 11 directories with 
> 11 different GPL'd/FLOSS distros in vanilla form, then it is still 
> possible that a court might consider the bundling together of the 
> various materials to be sufficient to form a copyrightable 
> expression.  Certainly in the world of books, the simple act of 
> collection, flowing it through a layout program and hitting "Print" is 
> enough to constitute a fully projectable expression of a work.
>
> For an analogy, consider the phone book -- the content is explicitly 
> *not* covered by copyright.  However, the **expression** of that 
> content (the size and shape of the book, the layout, font, etc,) is.  
> The idea is that if you take non-copyright material, do a 
> butt-load-o-work, and come up with a novel expression, more useful 
> expression, etc, then you still get to protect it from willy-nilly 
> copying.  (Same thing with Westlaw -- the case texts are public 
> domain, but the compensation for a company to visit every court in the 
> country, get copies, digitize them all, index them, etc, is that they 
> get to claim copyright to their particular publications, and charge 
> for access.)
>
> In a University setting, imagine you are an English Prof, and you want 
> to use a snippit of Shakespeare in your official courseware.  Under 
> Cancopy, the courseware people have to go a find the exact book you 
> took that snippit from, and if that *particular* source is still under 
> copyright, then tada - royalties due in full to the publisher.  If you 
> were an experienced Prof or cared for the poor beaten pocketbooks of 
> your students, you would probably chose a dusty old copy from 1919, 
> and nope, no royalty dues required.
>
> What LM has done here is probably more on the "lifted a pinky finger" 
> end of the Effort-Expended-Scale (as opposed to the "butt-load-o-work" 
> end), but the safest thing to do would still be to copy the individual 
> FLOSS distros off the DVD individually, or even better, use it as a 
> conceptual idea for building the LUGs even better Disk of Distros, and 
> download fresh copies from the internet, and make copies available on 
> more idealistic terms (License Terms like: "Make Lots of Copies.  Go 
> wild.  Put your own LUG's name on it!  Run Linux!  Enjoy!")
>
>     -Cedric
>
> On 19-Mar-07, at 1:14 AM, Bob Jonkman wrote:
>
>> This is what Richard Weait <kwlug-disc at kwlug.org> said
>> about "Re: [kwlug disc.] Linux Magazine" on 18 Mar 2007 at 5:39
>>
>>>> Joe wrote:
>>>>> Does anyone happen to know if (where) Linux Magazine can be purchased
>>>>> from local retailers (in Ontario)?
>>>>>
>>>>> The magazine has a website at http://www.linux-magazine.com/
>>>
>>> KW Bookstore is worth a look.  Lots of Linux-related magazines last
>>> time I was there.  Also it is a chance to shop locally without the
>>> bookstore cartel.
>>
>> KW Bookstore http://www.kwbookstore.on.ca/ definitely does carry 
>> Linux Pro Magazine
>> http://linux-magazine.ca .  If they're out it's because I just bought 
>> the last copy of the
>> March issue this week.
>>
>> It came with a DVD of 11 small Linux distributions.   I'm thinking 
>> this would be nice-to-copy
>> for the LUG, but the magazine claims "No material may be reproduced 
>> in any form whatsoever in
>> whole or in part without the written permission of the publishers."  
>> Does that comply with
>> the various GNU licences that the distros are based on?
>>
>> Irony alert:  Have I violated the publisher's rights by quoting their 
>> statement on violating
>> their rights?
>>
>>
>> --Bob.
>>
>> -- -- -- --
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>> SOBAC Microcomputer Services              Voice: +1-519-669-0388
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>>
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>    Cedric Puddy, IS Director            cedric at thinkers.org
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