Socially|Mundane

Most of us have seen or heard of the GPL (General Public License). We all know there are such things as copyright laws and Intellectual Property (IP) rights and that those rights are pressed quite often against infringing parties.

The key to all of this has to do with "copyright". Litterally 'copy rights' - or the right to copy, (official common definition here.) Well, the GPL, or Genral Public License is a pretty basic idea of creating something, and allowing it to be freely copiable and redistributable, but only under certain contitions.

Modeled after the GPL are other "open source; a.k.a. 'free"' licensing schemes, some of which are wonderful ideas. A newer system called the Creative Commons, (CC) (official web site here,) is heaven-sent for me as a photographer. There are times when I just want some very simple, easy to understand rules of my works, otherwise, have-at-it. The main difference between the GPL and CC is that the GPL usually refers to software and other intangibles, whereas the CC applies to everything else, such as print, visual and audio works.

Well, some professionals are a bit wary of the GPL (and to a lesser degree, the CC,) because a common requirement of the license is to allow the product (software, in this case) to remain copyable and redistributable, and often that original copyrights remain intact. The problem has to do with the legal definitions of these kind of licenses in the terms of just what kind of licenses they are...

Are they copyright licenses? ...or are they contract licenses?

The problem here comes down to what is called 'creative license', which is a contract licensing issue and the legal recourse of original creators is nowhere near as potent as what can be done under copyright law. This has to do with the definition of "significant derivitive works' from the original material, which also is why Tenshi Vielle was libelous in her original proclamation of theft, since (even though it already was shown to be otherwise,) the "creative license' law would have applied anyway, since the original from Renderosity is not under the CC license.

The idea is that if you take an image or other Creative Commons or General Public License work and significantly change it, then creative license law (contract law) would apply and the original creator would have little recourse. So there was a lawsuit in which one software venbdor sued another software vender for ripping them off. The accused procliamed the original software, under the GPL license fell under contract law, and that they were selling a dirivitive work. The court found for the defendant and so the GPL and by extension, Creative Commons licenses basically became useless overnight. The decision was apealed.

Now comes huge news. The Federal Appeals Court has overturned the lower court's ruling. In a nutshell, the GPL, CC and other 'public licenses' have new fangs. Nasty ones at that. The GPL, CC and other public licenses are found to fall under copyright law. It is copyright law that the DMCA, (Digital Millineum Copyright Act,) is based-on.

So, this means the creators inside Second Life and many other virtual worlds, anyone allowed to hold on to Intellectual ownership of their creations now have bazooka bombshells to lob at infringers of their Intellectual Property. A very good story about this ruling here:

Groklaw - Court of Appeals for Federal Circuit Overturns Jacobsen v. Katzer
"As the court put it, "Copyright holders who engage in open source licensing have the right to control the modification and distribution of copyrighted material." Now the case goes back to the lower court to reconsider, based on this ruling, the question of injunctive relief. So. "The heart of the argument on appeal concerns whether the terms of the Artistic License are conditions of, or merely covenants to, the copyright license," the court of appeals writes. And it finds that they are conditions, so relief is by means of copyright law, not contract. That matters a lot, because, as you've seen in the SCO saga, copyright law has teeth -- including injunctive relief -- that make policing infringements easier."