[sword-devel] Finding out copyright programatically

[Chris Burrell]

Yes, this is exactly what I was thinking and has more complexity than I had
originally thought of - very helpful.

I guess the next question, is whether your four categories are
comprehensive? We would perhaps want to include another bit to indicate
that there are special non-parseable conditions, so as to indicate to a
developer that he'll have to work out what it means for him. I'm thinking
for example of texts that someone makes available on condition that they
are not displayed/used alongside other texts from different publishers, or
other kind of special permissions.

What do you mean by "rights for distribution of an unchanged module"? Do
you mean that someone accessing the module through a front-end, in this
case a web server, would not be included in the licence? i.e. because the
web server has made modifications to the way the data is displayed?

I guess the one thing that I'm not quite clear on yet which affects the
above discussion, is what where the distribution licence ends and where a
license to use the distributed module in Sword frontends starts/ends. Say,
a Xiphos user gets a module distributed by CrossWire, such as the ESV. Does
the Xiphos user then need to seek permission to use the module through
Xiphos from Crossway? Presumably not? Or do the Xiphos owners need to seek
permission from Crossway? Possibly?

Just trying to get my head around the Copyright and licensing law which I
find rather complicated.
Chris



On 6 January 2013 21:39, Peter von Kaehne <refdoc at gmx.net> wrote:

>
> > Von: Chris Burrell <chris at burrell.me.uk>
>
> > Can I suggest adding something in the module configuration and/or
> > sword/jsword backends that could indicate what kind of copyright we're
> > dealing with: PUBLIC_DOMAIN, COPYRIGHT, OTHER, etc.
>
> As such this is simply a call to see some conf entry, is it not?
>
> The only caveat would be that the conf entry might not be present and
> something sensible (i.e. something which stops you using a module
> inadvertently) needs to be returned.
>
> The next question is interpretation of the result - rights for
> distribution of a unchanged module e.g. would prevent using it in a
> webserver. Rights to create derivates non-commercially would preclude
> having e.g. ads on the screen.
>
> Maybe one of the best solutions (not sure if this is feasible) would be to
> return a bit encoded byte value which summarises
>
> Copyright - yes/no
> Distributable as unchanged module yes/no
> Distributable as derivate yes/no
> Commercial yes/no
>
> For a church website without ads, only the third value would be relevant.
> For someone who wants to create CDs with modules to give away or sale, 2
> and 4 would be relevant.
>
> Does this cover what you were thinking of?
>
> Peter
>
>
>
>
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