Re: [ANNOUNCE] DSFS Network Forensic File System for Linux Patches

[Valdis . Kletnieks]

On Wed, 31 Aug 2005 12:00:45 MDT, "Jeff V. Merkey" said:

>  There's also a more fundamental problem with the GPL language.  The GPL stated it
> confers "RIGHT TO COPY".  This is not the same as "RIGHT TO GRANT
> LICENSES TO DISTRIBUTE."  Under US copyright law, if you confer to any person
> the "right to copy" in a license which states the software is FREE, you have in essense
> affected a copyright transfer to each and every person who receives the 
> code.

Bullshit.

17 USC 106(3) talks about transfer of ownership *of the item*, not of the
copyright itself (see 17 USC 202, which clarifies this).  So you can sell a
book - but that isn't transferring the copyright of the book.  There isn't any
actual transfer without a document that actually *SAYS* "transfer of copyright" -
see 17 USC 204 (a) (Note that there's whole companies in Utah, with actual
large legal teams, that seem unclear on the concept in 17 USC 204(a), so I'm
not surprised that you're confused on this as well).

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