Update on Software Freedom Law Center work

[Jan Zerebecki]

On Mon, Apr 03, 2006 at 09:58:26AM +1000, Troy Rollo wrote:
> On Saturday 01 April 2006 18:43, Jan Zerebecki wrote:
> > To enforce the licence one doesn't need any copyright (asignment)
> > at the work at all. You just need to be appointed by (one of) the
> > copyright holder(s) to enforce it.
> 
> This is not generally the case. If you don't own the copyright, you cannot 
> enforce it unless: (a) you have been given a contractual right to do so *for 
> value* and join the copyright holder as a party to the action; or (b) you are 
> an insurer who is enforcing the right for insurance purposes. This is 
> something that may vary between jurisdictions, but that is the basic rule in 
> common law jurisdictions.

Is there a case possible where neither can be constructed without
hassle? Think something like: insurance against GPL violators.
And in case of (a): Must one in practice be somehow involved (for
example go to court or something) when beeing "joined"?

As it seems doing something like (a) or (b) instead of asignment,
would make it as easy to enforce the copyright and not give it
away at the same time.

AFAIK for the FSF asigning copyright is for much more than only
enforcing copyright but if this works this might be good to
pursue in the light of an umbrella-open-source-org as IMHO much
more people would be willing to do something like this than
asigning copyright...



Jan