GitHub is sued, and we may learn something about Creative Commons licensing

Post by JamesSwift » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 2:49 PM UTC

intelVISA wrote: post #23

distcs wrote: post #11

> “Your honor, we needed so many works that it was simply not practical to ask permission of the creators.” I don’t find this argument convincing given the ability today to license many content types at scale for TDM, including images, music and yes, journal articles (See “Full disclosure” above), but it is an argument often offered by infringers. Why is this type of argument even valid? Isn't this fundamentally sayi…

>So how? Is it not absurd? it is. "Your honor, I've been drink-driving so many times I honestly can't tell you an accurate estimate any more so in both our interests let's agree it was basically uncountable, or 0." wait a minute...

Post by dspillett » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 2:50 PM UTC

judge2020 wrote: post #103

dspillett wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Copyright is not something that can be signed over by a terms-of-use change of a hosting provider Agreeing to GitHub's terms doesn't try to assign copyright over your code, it grabs licence to use your code however they see fit which is¹ legally quite different. Of course the real fun comes if someone agrees to their terms then uploads some of my code which they have to right to assign the licence to GitHub for. Wh…

It seems a lot of this stems from how the DMCA does not require that these hosting providers actually check for code ownership at submission, or maybe just how they don't have an explicit checkbox for "I affirm that I can license this code to GitHub" every time someone is uploading code. If it is shown that the license in the TOS is valid, the legal question might boil down to "is the TOS License broad enough to wher…

Post by visarga » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 2:51 PM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #96

visarga wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're facing a copyright extinction event. The whole concept is out of touch with the new reality - when you can generate 100 variations for your text, code or image with the click of a button, what does it even mean to hold copyright over the original? "In the style of" killed copyright in 2022.

This is a pipe dream. There's too much money behind strictly enforcing copyright protections on commercial products. If anything gets killed, it's going to be automatic copyright protection for "little guys". Microsoft will be able to copy your publicly shared code/art/images willy-nilly but will still send their compliance officers to check that your company has a valid Office 365 license if they notice you writing…

Post by turmeric_root » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 2:52 PM UTC

JimDabell wrote: post #86

distcs wrote: post #11

> “Your honor, we needed so many works that it was simply not practical to ask permission of the creators.” I don’t find this argument convincing given the ability today to license many content types at scale for TDM, including images, music and yes, journal articles (See “Full disclosure” above), but it is an argument often offered by infringers. Why is this type of argument even valid? Isn't this fundamentally sayi…

> But apparently infringers are using this line of argument. So how? Is it not absurd? You realise that they haven’t actually used that line of argument, right? The article author speculated that it might be part of the defence and then said they didn’t find it compelling. Set up a straw man and then knocked it down in virtually the same breath. Don’t waste your time complaining about legal arguments that have not be…

Post by jfk13 » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 2:53 PM UTC

mch82 wrote: post #114

dspillett wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Copyright is not something that can be signed over by a terms-of-use change of a hosting provider Agreeing to GitHub's terms doesn't try to assign copyright over your code, it grabs licence to use your code however they see fit which is¹ legally quite different. Of course the real fun comes if someone agrees to their terms then uploads some of my code which they have to right to assign the licence to GitHub for. Wh…

How did you type the superscript footnotes? Edit: Wow, this is game changing. Markdown parsers need to implement superscript ascii character support! Lowercase ⁽ᵃ⁾ Uppercase ⁽ᴬ⁾ Numbers ⁽⁹⁹⁾