Re: [bitcoin-dev] Open Block Chain Licence, BIP[xxxx] Draft

[Milly Bitcoin <milly@bitcoins.info>]

>We don't want to play at being
> lawyer, but our review does point towards this being something worth
> coming back to.
>
> In terms of citation, we did reference a case called /Feist/.

I don't see how you can possibly conclude this effort is worth any 
additional time.  The legal reference is:  Feist Publications, Inc., v. 
Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991).  The court ruled that 
Rural's directory was nothing more than an alphabetic list of all 
subscribers to its service, which it was required to compile under law, 
and that no creative expression was involved. The fact that Rural spent 
considerable time and money collecting the data was irrelevant to 
copyright law, and Rural's copyright claim was dismissed.

If some entity puts a copyright notice, demands a license, signs 
software with a certificate, claims developers or miners are some legal 
entity, etc. then those entities are setting themselves up to be sued or 
prosecuted (whether legitimately or not).  There is no benefit to 
claiming such ownership or authority or issuing any license because 
nobody is going to enforce anything and they don't even have that 
authority anyway.  A 5-minute talk with an IP lawyer should confirm that 
... but you sound like you are not going to do that.  Bitcoin certainly 
attracts quite a number of completely irrational people.

Russ