Familie mißversteht geöffnete Quelle, versetzt in Panik u. klagt das falsche Person†¦
Geöffnete Quelle soll eine Weise der Vereinfachung der genehmigenden Ausgaben und des Teilens Ihrer Software/Musik/Bildschirmes/anderen Inhalts mit den Massen sein - frei und magnanimously. Problem ist, was geschieht, wenn etwas geöffnete Quelle, a (mögliche) Verletzung einiger sonst Rechte zu sein gefunden wird? Was geschieht seinen Ableitungen? Verpacken sie gerecht herauf Geschäft und finden noch etwas, oder sind sie für ihre Tätigkeiten erlaubterweise verantwortlich? In was balanciert scheint, um ein Grenzsteinkasten zu diesem Punkt zu werden, f wir imsind Begrif, herauszufinden.
Eine Texan Familie klagt jetzt Jungfrau-Mobile für das Verwenden ein Foto ihrer Tochter, Alison Chang, in einer Anzeige Kampagne - die Verriegelung ist, es wurde freigegeben vom Photographen an Flickr unter Kreative Common-Zuerkennung von genehmigen Sie und das ist, wohin Jungfrau-Mobile das Foto erhielt. Das Problem ist, hatte das Mädchen, das im Foto gekennzeichnet wurde, keine Idee, die ihr Foto benutzt wurde - oder das wurde es unter der kreativen Common-Lizenz freigegeben.
Während der Fall z.Z. steht, klagen das Changs Verbraucher von den geöffneten Quellarbeiten und von der nicht ursprünglichen Partei verantwortlich für die Freigabe der Arbeit als geöffneter Ausgangsstoff ohne ein korrektes Mittelzustimmungform.
Es erhält schwieriger als das. Aussehen in den Mitteln benötigt eine Mittelzustimmungform, aber die Eintragung eines Fotos online technisch nicht. Mindestens nicht schon - ist diese andere Ausgabe? So in diesem Fall, gibt ein Photograph ein Foto online bekannt, völlig innerhalb ihrer Rechte und Freigaben Foto selbst als geöffnete Quellarbeit. Dann wird die geöffnete Quellarbeit (und nicht die tatsächliche Person) in einem Mittelaussehen verwendet - was ordnet dann an? Warum klagt die Familie die bewegliche Jungfrau und nicht den Photographen? Verstehen sie (und ihr Rechtsanwalt) völlig das Konzept der geöffneten Quelle und des kreativen Common-Genehmigens? Haben Endbenutzer des geöffneten Ausgangsstoffs eine gesetzliche Verpflichtung, sicherzugehen, daß das Material, das sie benutzen, sauber und insgesamt erlaubterweise als geöffnete Quelle an erster Stelle freigegeben wurde? Gerade wie weit muß man gehen?
Genug für Sie noch nicht verwirren? Gut fügte Jungfrau-Mobile Beleidigung der Verletzung hinzu und untertitelte das Foto in ihren Reklameanzeigen mit, welchen Mengen - mehr oder weniger - eine Beleidigung zu Alison Chang. Ist die Frage von, ob das Thema eines geöffneten Quell' d Fotographie gegen Einerselbst benutzt werden kann eine zugelassene oder moralische Ausgabe? Does releasing a photo to the public under a lax license let it be used by anyone for any purpose, even when “hurting” the original producer/subject?
This is quite the legal tangle, and we’re betting it’ll be settled out of court – but even if it is, it’s certain to come up later in one court case or another. We’re not lawyers, but this is clearly a case that poses quite the risk to open source, attempting to redefine just how “open” it really is. Here’s a re-cap of the issues at stake:
- Are “consumers” of open source legally liable for using “dirty” open source’d code? Do they have a legal requirement to verify its validity before using it?
- Will legal consent forms be required for simply posting photos online? What about “personal” sites like Flickr, MySpace, and Facebook?
- Just how global is an open source copyright? In this case, Virgin Mobile Australia is charged with breaking a US copyright.
- Previous court cases have ruled that bloggers are journalists in their own right. Does the freedom of press protect online photo-journalism, too?1
It’s unlikely that all of these issues will actually appear in a court of law, but it certainly is possible. The first and second are very likely to appear, and have far-reaching effects; whereas the latter two are stretching it a bit, but anything is likely when money is involved. Creative Commons has an optional “country” setting that determines, in the case of a legal dispute, which country’s laws and jurisdictions shall apply. We have no details at the moment which setting was specified, but the default is USA, and that’s where the photographer and subject both resided. The Creative Commons license is recognized by law in both the United States and Australia.
Should it actually be ruled that Virgin Mobile is guilty as charged, a huge online panic in the open source community will likely ensue. At the moment, most big open source projects perform a cursory check on any code/content submitted for possible legal violations (and, let’s be honest, for plausible deniability more than anything else). But in some cases (read: Wikipdia) it’s almost impossible to practically do so, thanks to the enormous volume of content being constantly contributed and the difficutly of vigorously checking it for legal trespasses. What happens when you can no longer simply trust the EULA that ships with a particularly code library? Or when the content you grab off of Wikipedia (technically licensed under the GFDL) isn’t as open source as it claims to be? And most importantly, that using such “dirty” materials makes you, in the eyes of the law, guilty of content/idea theft?
If any ruling of this sort were to be passed with an actual verdict on the open source angle, it would instantly destroy the entire spirit of open source. No one would be able to trust any open source project or the other, destroying one of the most important benefits of using an open source license the first place: being able to instantly convey the rights a consumer has or doesn’t by simply telling them it’s “GPL” or “BSD” or whatever. You’d need something tantamount to a chain of custody for each and every modification/copy, telling people exactly where each bit of code or content came from and what grounds you had to use it, and no project would be safe without a lawyer of its own. In a word, it’d be the death of open source… In the United States, that is; because the rest of the world (for the most part) is blissfully immune to many of the issues outlined in this post.
Not only does the United States system of copyrights and software patents have to be rewritten to prevent ridiculous things like this taking a toll on the entire open source industry, but also a legally-recognized free software “Bill of Rights” needs to be drafted to ensure that lawsuits like this one don’t jeopardize everything that the online community has been working on for decades. Just like the current Bill of Rights defines basic freedoms for US Citizens that no law can overrule (the Patriot Act excluded because GWB says so), free software needs a similar document to set down its (proverbial) foot and ensure that open source lives on – freely, as it was meant to be.
It’s important to note that the Creative Commons license that the photo was released under was not marked as non-commercial, and that Virgin Mobile fully complied with the letter of the Creative Commons license, by properly citing the Flickr page the photo was grabbed from at the bottom of their advertisement. As far as Virgin Mobile is concerned, they didn’t really do anything wrong. It is no wonder most magazines still insist on getting explicit legal permission before including anything in their issues, even if the EULA/copyright is clearly indicated on the site/source!
This might just be a case of a family trying to get rich quick; and if it is, it’s quite unfortunate that the entire spirit of open source has to be put on trial for a couple of bucks and a 16-year-old emotional teenager’s injured self image. If it’s not, it’s still a damn shame.
- In this case, we’re referring to the original “blog post†on Flickr by the photographer, and not the subsequent use by Virgin Mobile
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