[tex-live] Political showstopper

Sebastian Rahtz sebastian.rahtz at computing-services.oxford.ac.uk
Sun Sep 14 01:01:30 CEST 2003


> 
> It may be that in this case the publisher will contend that the content 
> exists in the public domain and is theirs to do with as they will. You 
> therefore need to argue that it is not in the public domain and the 
> copyright exists for specific named people or organisations.

I don't  think it will be hard to prove that the content
is not in the public domain. As I understand the law,
things only get in the public domain if the copyright holder
explicit puts it there, which is rather rare, or when the
copyright expires.

> have sufficiently argued the case then you may sue for `loss of 
> earnings' as a percentage of the income the publisher has derived from 
> including the CD with the book -- of course you will need to 
> demonstrate that the CD added a certain amount of value to the 
> publication, it is this difference you can claim on.

one could demand that the book be withdrawn
from sale, and warehouse copies be destroyed?
It is an interesting matter to speculate what
exactly one would ask for if it ever got to court!

Professionally speaking, I'd like to hear about legal
cases where the GPL or some other F/OSS license has been
upheld. Does anyone know of a good test case,
preferably in a UK or European court?

Sebastian


More information about the tex-live mailing list