Legal Update

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Nov 16, 2007 7:06 AM, Monkey Boy <monkeyboythom at gmail.com> wrote:
> Could you turn the requirement on it's ear and be even more specific on the
> Wiki page? Instead of saying here are some third parties links to stuff that
> may or may not be legal in your country why not explicitly say what is legal
> in what country?

Are you offering to find lawyers who are experts in each country's
legal system who are willing to provide binding legal advice and
liability coverage concerning the accuracy of such lists? Or were you
thinking we could get binding legal advice..wikipedia-style.. from
individual users.

I don't think you've got a firm grasp of how screwed up "contributory
infringement" can be.
The act of explicitly discussing the details about what is and is not
legal and where what is and is not available is, could very well
increase the liability for contributory infringement for the party
hosting the webpages containing that detailed information that also
host links to 3rd party resources where these materials can be gotten.
 Stuff like that can be construed as a "willful" act to aid
infringement.

We've just got the legal nod to link to 3rd party repositories as long
as we make extremely general references and we do not get into the
specifics of the contents of those repositories.  What you are
suggesting most probably create additional liability and would
threaten our ability to link to external repositories at all.

So you'll be making a choice.  Do you want the Fedora project website
to be as explicit an as accurate as possible concerning the legality
of using specific software without any links whatsoever to places
where you can obtain the software. Or do you want us to be able to
reference the websites of 3rd party repositories in a general way for
people to more easily find?

I think detailed, thoughtful  legal analysis for problematic software
in each and every country would be an extraordinary educational
experience, and I think we'd all learn a lot about the details of
evolving software patent law outside the US. But such an "educational"
experience would mean that Fedora sites will not be pointing people to
any 3rd party repositories. And I'm pretty sure that's not what you
want.


-jef