From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (smtp1.linux-foundation.org [172.17.192.35]) by mail.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 6EBAF13F0 for ; Wed, 2 Sep 2015 20:58:46 +0000 (UTC) X-Greylist: from auto-whitelisted by SQLgrey-1.7.6 Received: from mail.help.org (mail.help.org [70.90.2.18]) by smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id E6611F2 for ; Wed, 2 Sep 2015 20:58:45 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [10.1.10.25] (B [10.1.10.25]) by mail.help.org with ESMTPA ; Wed, 2 Sep 2015 16:58:43 -0400 To: bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org References: From: Milly Bitcoin Message-ID: <55E762FE.9060904@bitcoins.info> Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2015 16:58:38 -0400 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.2.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.0 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_40 autolearn=ham version=3.3.1 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.3.1 (2010-03-16) on smtp1.linux-foundation.org Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Open Block Chain Licence, BIP[xxxx] Draft X-BeenThere: bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.12 Precedence: list List-Id: Bitcoin Development Discussion List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 02 Sep 2015 20:58:46 -0000 >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