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Ask FSF General Counsel Eben Moglen
Posted by
Roblimo
on Mon Feb 10, 2003 12:00 PM
from the liberty-needs-all-the-defenders-she-can-get dept.
from the liberty-needs-all-the-defenders-she-can-get dept.
Columbia Law School professor Eben Moglen has been the Free Software Foundation's (pro bono) general counsel since 1993. He's also involved with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and has been mentioned on Slashdot a number of times because of his participation in these groups and some of the worthy causes they support, as well as other freedom-related matters. One question per post, please. We'll run Prof. Moglen's answers to 10 of the highest-moderated questions as soon as he gets them back to us.
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Biggest win and loss so far? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/~em%20emalb | Last Journal: Monday February 12 2007, @11:30AM)
How about loss?
I am sure a lot of us here think we know, but it would be interesting to hear it directly from you.
thanks for fighting the good fight.
View on GNU/Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Monday January 17 2005, @05:36AM)
MODS: I think this is a valid question. Maybe he will have something interesting to say about it.
Better: View on GNU/Linux (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Castle Technologies? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.slack-fr.org/ | Last Journal: Friday November 23, @04:23AM)
If that's the case, you are probably not free to comment on the current proceedings, so a simple "yes" or "no" would be more than enough...
Legal fights (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://members.cox.net/bungi/)
Legal Question (Score:5, Interesting)
Clarifying the GPL (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.bigbrother.net/)
Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.mit.edu/)
This is similar to those of us who code Linux applications ---- we work for free out of matter of principle and consider it as a way of donating to a charity organization since Linux is good for everyone.
My question is: Is your life effected by your day job (where you get paid) and your "night" job (in which you are the legal counsell for the GNU organization)?
GNU vs. other copyrights (Score:4, Interesting)
Looking to the future (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.polsci.wv...ecream/icecream.html)
Free other things (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Tuesday November 04 2003, @03:52PM)
What do you think about the applicability of the ideas and organisational methods of the free software movement to things other that software?
For example free designs of things (products, buildings etc)...
appearances (Score:5, Funny)
(http://alexvalentine.org/ | Last Journal: Friday January 21 2005, @01:42PM)
Pro bono (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://pgengler.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 15 2002, @10:22PM)
Who is Supposed to Sue a GPL Violator ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Free versus Patriot Act (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.joelwest.com/)
FSF's W3C patent policy position (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm writing because I cannot understand some parts of the "FSF's Position on Proposed W3 Consortium 'Royalty-Free' Patent Policy", at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/w3c-patent.html .
First, it is quite clear that you believe that software exercising patents with "field-of-use" licenses cannot be distributed under the GPL. However, it is not clear whether you believe that such software could be distributed as free software at all. Paragraph two seems to say that it could not, but it also appears to conflate GPLed software with free software, so I am not sure this is what the author meant. Paragraph three equivocates by saying "licensing under other free software licenses does not imply free", without saying "licensing under other free software licenses implies not free".
The impact of the proposed policy on the free software community obviously depends greatly on whether it could prevent us from implementing some standards at all, or only under the GPL. Which is it? (Since most of the document focuses on the GPL, I assume it is the latter. But it should be stated explicitly, and the hints to the contrary should be cleaned up.)
Second, who exactly would be prevented from distributing software exercising such patents under the GPL? Those in jurisdictions in which the patent applies, or everyone?
Third, why exactly are "field-of-use" patents incompatible with the GPL? The addendum intended to clarify this matter does not succeed. Step 4 in its example says,
But C's patent equally prohibits folks from taking a (hypothetical) GPLed search engine and adding URL parsing code. So by that argument, nobody can distribute a GPLed search engine, either. What really is the criterion that prevents distribution under the GPL? Is it that the author "knows" that others will be "tempted" to modify the software such that it no longer meets the "field-of-use" restriction? Is it that the author has accepted the patent license himself?And how does this differ from the situation of distributing GPLed software that cannot be used in some jurisdictions? If I distribute cryptographic software under the GPL, it will end up in the hands of people in repressive countries who are not allowed to use (never mind redistribute) it. This would seem to imply that such software cannot be distributed under the GPL.
I hope you can answer these questions and update the text on your web site.
Question (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.grub.net/blog/index.html | Last Journal: Wednesday June 27, @08:48AM)
Sir,
Does RMS refer to you as the "GNU/General Counsel"?
Being like you. (Score:5, Interesting)
Should litigation be the main weapon? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.thegline.com)
my questions (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://tinyurl.com/4q6jo | Last Journal: Friday January 28 2005, @10:43AM)
How does this time compare to the time you spend teaching, doing research?
Is your hours spent x typical lawyer wage (curious what that is also) considered a charitable contribution?
US v Europe v the world... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://service-architecture.blogspot.com/)
I'm assuming here that you follow the legal issues that interest you outside of the US. Which country's laws do you wish applied in the US ? It has been said that the US has the appearance of the 1st ammendment with none of its actual manifestations (similar comments have been made about egalite, liberte, fraternite in france), do you agree ?
And pushing my luck... why is a company able to claim rights assigned to individuals ?
GPL and embedded software (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.memerocket.com/)
Question (Score:5, Interesting)
What can be done about spurious legal threats? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/ | Last Journal: Monday January 07 2002, @01:07AM)
My question is: In your opinion, what can be done to change the way the system operates so that spurious legal threats aren't so economical? What can someone like me do, besides donating to the EFF or going to law school?
Which crappy law would you have overturned? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.myspace.com/mypetmachinemusic)
Legal equivalent of GNU (Score:5, Interesting)
GPL v3 backward-compatible? FDL broken? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://1346656531/)
I've heard talk of a new version of the GPL, which will fix shortcomings of version 2 (e.g. that it is unclear whether use of dynamic linking and/or CORBA-style binding to a GPLed work constitutes a "derived work").
However, a large amount of existing software is distributable "under the terms of the GPL, version 2" (and *not* under "version 2, or at your option, any later version"); for instance, the Linux kernel. Any future software, licensed under a GPL v3, would presumably be incompatible with such existing software.
Can the FSF do anything to make the GPL v3 backward-compatible with such software?
Also, would you consider the following part of the FDL to be a bug?
A DTD only describes the syntactic structure of a document, which may provide nowhere near enough information to understand the file format. [I sent an email to the FSF about this but it seems to have got lost in the ether]
Win by any means? (Score:3, Interesting)
Eldred fallout? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.sanwalka.org/)
Simply stated, what is your reaction to the Eldred v. Ashcroft decision. How do you think it will affect the legal climate for furthering the position of Free Software? Is this really and indication, as Mr. Lessig has noted, that any hope of the US government developing a more generous and insightful public policy position on the future of IP rights is effectivly on hold? What, if anything, can be done to further this cause other than writing to Congress and/or supporting the EFF?
PHB opinions (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.reric.net/)
Put you in my will... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/~wowbagger/journal/87552 | Last Journal: Monday September 03, @08:07PM)
So how would I go about making the FSF a beneficiary? You might want to put that info on the web site.
Right now, the only organization I have listed is the NRA - they make it pretty easy to set this sort of thing up.
The odious "Web services" hole in the GPL (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/blacknova)
I know because I am the lead developer on a web-based GPL'd game, and we were advised of such by the GNU folks (many thanks for them answering our concerns). They suggested waiting for GPL3 (please PLEASE hurry!), or using the Affero GPL, which we cant, since it isnt compatible with the GPL, and portions of our code are from another project that is GPL'd.
What isn't clear (and what I hope you can answer) is what the law would say about a company that took a GPL'd web project (like mine), modified it, hosted it, and provided that service to the general public without providing the source to those modifications.
Is there any legal recourse to developers in that situation, because it has actually occured, and until now, we were under the impression that we were basically powerless until GPL3.0 comes out..
Did I violate the FDL? (Score:3, Offtopic)
(http://folk.uio.no/kjetikj/ | Last Journal: Thursday October 28 2004, @05:00PM)
Did I violate the FDL? (If I did, I must apologize to V. Alex Brennen.)
What I've come to think about is that it seems the FDL requires that the full license text accompanies every copy. When you're making single-page excerpts, it is of course very inconvenient to include a four-page license... But is it really necessary to include the whole license, or is it sufficient to include a short copyright notice referencing the FDL?
Just read the card (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.thcnet.net/)
Your campaign seems to have the momentum of a run-away freight train. Why are you so popular?
Helping independent developers work with the GPL (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.virtualmin.com/)
However, when I'm preparing contracts I never know just how to specify that wholly original work we do for them will be "Work-for-hire" under whatever license they choose, but code based on and extending GPLed software will be placed under the same license.
I've browsed through the GNU site, in hopes of locating some example contract language that would make this clear to new customers and make it a legally binding aspect of any agreements made, but alas, I could find no help in this regard.
I should point out: my clients know that the GPL is an enforceable copyright, and don't have a problem with that--our work with GPL'ed software is usually the reason they come to us...this isn't a question of companies wishing to steal GPLed software. It is a question of how to make those terms compatible with an agreement that covers both GPLed work and non-GPLed "work-for-hire". Usually we are doing a bit of both types of work, and we'd like the contract to reflect that in a clear and comprehensive manner.
Seems like this would be a common problem for developers, and I was surprised that I couldn't find any documentation about adding this kind of clause to a contract.
Legal plan for incorporating free projects? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.pointrel.org/)
Obviously people can donate code to the Free Software Foundation, but that seems both to centralize liability risk in one organization (why should FSF take the fall for infringing a bogus software patent?) and also to provide less protection to the authors while they are writing free software.
One can use the Apache model which was incorporated in Delaware, but Apache does not seem have any restrictions in their articles of incorporation related to not selling software. I haven't actually ever found the FSF bylaws or certificate of incorporation anywhere on-line.
It would be nice to have a detailed process to follow that is a no brainer -- use these words in the articles of incorporation and bylaws, pay some specific (well chosen) corporation that specializes in forming corporations to file the papers ($500), keep up with annual reports and your annual fees for your registered legal agent ($100-200), and you are up and running with a reasonable liability shield if anything innocently infringes.
I'm thinking of something like this for a free software related organization I'm starting, with wording chosen to ensure the materials stay free:
The organization's purpose is [details snipped...]
To that end, the organization may engage in any legal activity, subject
to the following restrictions intended to ensure free licensing of the
results of all the organization's efforts (with "free" intended to mean
"free as in freedom" in the same way as the Free Software Foundation's
current or future similar definition of "free" licensing for software or
other creative works of various types -- e.g. public domain, GPL, LGPL,
GFDL, Python 2.0.1 license -- for detailed examples see:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
an
reference). The restrictions are:
1) that any copyrights the organization creates itself, or whose
creation it directly supports in whole or in part, or which it receives
as donations or otherwise comes to hold, must only be licensed under
free licenses, and
2) that any patents the organization creates itself, or whose
creation it directly supports in whole or in part, or which it receives
as donations or otherwise comes to hold, must only be licensed under
free licenses,
3) that any trademarks the organization creates itself, or whose
creation it directly supports in whole or in part, or which it receives
as donations or otherwise comes to hold, will only used to support and
distinguish endeavors which require the free licensing of all the
resulting copyrights and/or patents, and
4) that copyrights, patents, and/or trademarks held for any reason by
the organization may not be voluntarily transferred from the
organization without contractual guarantees that future holders will
abide by these restrictions, and that the organization is required to
enforce these guarantees to the maximum extent feasible.
5) that in the event of the likeliehood of an involuntary transfer of
copyrights, patents, or trademarks from the organization such as from
the result of a judgement against the organization, the organization
must take all legal and feasible steps to prevent the transfer or to
make a voluntary transfer to an appropriate non-profit organization as
under section (4) or if appropriate place the item in the public domain.
These restrictions may not be removed by future changes to these
articles of incorporation.
What can one do to forward the cause? (Score:5, Interesting)
You are donating your time/knowledge. What are other ways to help?
Specifically, What is the single best thing a supporter can do to help. In other words What does the FSF need most that we might be able to supply?
o Money
o Volunteers (with what skills?, to do what?)
o Publicity
o Subject Matter Experts (what subjects?)
o Something else I can't imagine?
Thanks.
Internationality of the GNU GPL (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.tomechangosubanana.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday November 05 2002, @08:06PM)
a translated version of the GPL would be really helpful to those of us who deal primarily with non-english-speaking customers (they all speak spanish here), particularly when they ask about the licensing terms for Free Software we install for them. Instead of telling them to believe us about the license, we'd like to hand them a copy they can read, understand, and then hand to their legal department for them to also read and understand. However, even while there are unofficial translations available, they're still unofficial and thus don't instill much confidence in people.
Pendulum of Rights (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/~Shadow%20Wrought/journal | Last Journal: Saturday November 17, @12:05PM)
My question is how you foresee the swing of the pendulum in the future. Do you think that the cycles will get smaller until a balance is reached, or do you see the cycles growing larger and larger until it causes a fracture and/or revolution in our society?
What role will the conflict over electronic media play in the balancing of individual rights?
Of course it would also be interesting to hear your views on the cyclical nature of individual rights as well.
Creative Commons (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://iki.fi/juhtolv)
What you think about licences of Creative Commons [creativecommons.org]? Are they really free licences for software, documentation and art?
It seems, that at least NoDerivs- and NonCommercial-licenses are non-free. After that only these licences are left:
Free Software licenses revoable? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://limpet.net/mbrubeck/)
Do you believe this claim is correct in all US jurisdictions, or do some state laws allow licenses like the GPL to be revoked by the copyright holder?
Criminality of encryption and the tech lawyers (Score:5, Interesting)
First I would like to say I took both of your upper level law courses at Columbia. Both of these classes were memorable, thought provoking and fun. You really changed my view on many things especially the way our society functions.
On to my questions. I know your opinions about patent law (for slashdot readers: he thinks it should be abolished). Yet patent law provides a very exciting field of work for a young lawyer that is proficient in technology. Can you suggest any other similar fields for such lawyers? Especially for lawyers that are not quite bright enough to become supreme court clerks?
My other question has to do with encryption. I agree with your belief that encryption is integral to free speech, and allows one to escape totalitarian governments. But you probably read the new proposed patriot act, which makes using encrypion to commit a crime a seperate offense that is punishable by a significantly long prison term. Do you think if that law is passed it will chill the sue of encryption. Esepcially since computer crimes are new and vaguely defined, and one can easily imagine unkowingly commiting one.
A third question about the american legal system. Is there any hope of a judiciary that is both independant and free and able to render decisions free of fear and outside pressures after what happened in the bush case, the microsoft case and the terrorist detention cases? Oh, might as well add the pledge of allegience case.
Maybe I put in too many questions
If any slashdot readers are columbia law students I highly recommend mr. Moglen's upper level courses. But beware rumors of him being an easy grader are just false.
GPL and Linking (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.cwitc.com/)
software patents (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://wolf.cheats4u...st/index.php?ref=893 | Last Journal: Thursday January 08 2004, @10:14PM)
GF.
What is a Derivative Work? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/)
What do you consider are the key considerations in determining if a work is derivative or not?
Future FSF Documentation/Media License(s) (Score:3)
(http://www.ironicentertainment.org/ | Last Journal: Thursday June 05 2003, @09:09AM)
Are there any plans currently to draft a license for artistic assets like graphics, music and sound effects and if not why? In many programs there are often artistic assests which are distributed with programs. Games are an obvious example but even in every day programs there are icons, sound effects and other UI elements associated with a program. Using the GPL and/or FDL for artistic assets seems a bit like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole as this isn't the purpose these licenses were created for.
DMCA creates spirit of fear on GATOS project (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Wednesday December 11 2002, @11:21AM)
I can echo this sentiment. Even if I thought I was legally in the "right" I wouldn't risk getting involved in a legal battle just to get a component on my $40 video card to work.
What advice would you give gatos devopers (or developers of similar code)?
Copyright Assignment to the FSF and defendability (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.sharedlists.com/)
But in actuality, I wonder if it'll make a difference. Specifically, I know the FSF requires some documentations from employers to double check the submissions were written with consent of a company that sponsored the work. However, there are problems with how things "really work" in the real world:
1) submission authors are never bugged again in the future to ensure that they aren't working for a new company.
2) many Gnu packages accept small patches without assignment ("if it's less than 6 lines of new code, we'll just apply it"), just not large ones.
The reason I bring this up is that I'm not convinced that the paperwork and bureaucracy overhead even amounts to the level of protection that is needed. It certainly hinders development in many cases as well by slowing down progress with paperwork.
Do you have any comments on the above that will enlighten me into the legal field of copyright assignment (of which I admit I know very little).
"Defensive" patents. (Score:3, Interesting)
As I understand it, they'd file patents on key technologies, and then give out unlimited, no-cost, no-royalty licenses for the technology to be used in Open Source projects.
Do you see this as a good idea for Open Source, or a bad one? Theoretically, the patent system is supposed to, well, work.
One would think that if someone discovered a technology, implemented it, and then shared it freely with the world.. If others used that technology, the discoverer wouldn't be able to just turn around and say, "Okay, now I'm filing, prepare for lawsuits!"
Or, one would think that even if there was a patent for something, a company wouldn't be able to ignore widespread, easily visible infringement (see the
I'm not really asking whether the patent system is broken or not, if improvements can be made, or anything of that sort. Basically, I'm just asking that, given the current state of affairs with the idea of patents, if Open Source companies should file for so-called defensive patents or not.
Are they really necessary, or could Open Source software stand on legal ground without them? Many people, including myself are worried that if defensive patents are filed, a company, even an Open Source company, could turn around later and say, "Here's your bill!"
Given the recent outbreaks of patent shennanigans and corporate corruption, I think we'd be stupid to believe that all Open Source entities are inherently "good", that they wouldn't try something like this. Software and defensive patents have been debated on Slashdot before, but it'd be nice to hear an actual lawyer's view on the subject - especially a lawyer so involved with Open Source and Free Software.
Suggestions for beginners? (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/)
I am currently a third year Computer Science major at a small southern university. I would ultimately like to complete my CS degree, attend law school, and help with the battle you are fighting (eg become an attorney for the EFF). What suggestions would you have for people like me?
Thanks,
Chas
MPAA vs. 2600 (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.ke5fx.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday May 20 2003, @02:09PM)
Becoming an IP Laywer (Score:3, Interesting)
Patriot II (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.geekinformed.com/)
How to make the uber-geek-lawyer? (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://iamsam.org/)
Short version of my question: There always seems to be a lot of wonder whenever a lawyer knows his or her techiespeak; everyone wishes that lawyers knew their technology better and that techies knew their law better. How should a quasi-geek like myself prepare to apply to a good law school?
Long(er) version: I am a geek with a liberal arts background (so not quite as hard-core in the geek arena as many around here, but enough to make a living out of it these days!). I have a BA in English and theatre arts (acting) from Cornell and am employed as a web developer with a focus on web accessibility (practical, technical aspects as well as legal). So what should a reasonably well-rounded person who is fascinated by law in cyberspace be doing to stand out when admissions time comes? (to an NYC-area school like Columbia or NYU, hopefully!)
Thanks very much,
Samuel Knowlton
How is GNU being keet strong? (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://web.abnormal.com/)
Right now if I get a program and I suspect has GNU code in it and its "protected" via something as simple as xor encrption, I can't verify its got stolen colde it in because I can't get at it because of things like the reverse engineering bits of DMCA.
What is being done to protect the rights of people that successfully verify a comercial closed source program has GPLed code it in?
Contractual Terms? (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://canonical.org/ | Last Journal: Sunday August 19 2001, @11:00AM)
There has been a lot of discussion [advogato.org] in the free software community lately about giving the GPL contractual terms to make it stronger. What do you think about this route?
How would you change the law? (Score:3, Interesting)
Disney and others aren't shy about buying the changes they want; why shouldn't we at least ask?