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Qualify "additional copies == new license" claim.

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The last commit brought in text that categorically claims: "automatic
termination cannot be cured by obtaining additional copies from an
alternate supplier".  While this position is by far the overwhelming
majority position among copyleft advocates, theorists, and legal
experts, the small minority dissenting opinion is simply too strongly
sourced to ignore.

Specifically, Till Jaeger's position was central to Harald Welte's
gpl-violations.org community-oriented GPL enforcement efforts.
Therefore, this tutorial must include his position when covering the
issue of automatic license reinstatement in this tutorial.

I have told Till that I can't believe his position is possibly correct.
(I understand that many other copyleft theorists and legal experts have
done so as well.)  However, Till remains steadfast that this position is
correct, at least under German copyright law.  Speaking for myself, I
have never met a legal expert as well-versed in both copyleft and German
copyright law as Till Jaeger is, and therefore I cannot in good
conscience allow this tutorial to remain silent regarding Till's
position, lest the tutorial propagate an inappropriate bias for the
majority belief.

That said, I still feel that a footnote is the right place for the
argument.  It *is* a tiny minority position [0] among an overwhelming
consensus to the contrary, and therefore adding the point to the main
text would only serve to distract the tutorial reader.

[0] In particular, I am convinced Jaeger's argument, if true, is a
    peculiarity of German law exclusively.  For example, French lawyers
    I've spoken with believe that the standard USA legal position on
    this issue is also accurate under French copyright law.  I therefore
    conclude the minority position (if accurate) is unrelated to
    differences between civil law and common law copyright regimes, and
    is instead a unique peculiarity to German copyright law.
This commit is contained in:
Bradley M. Kuhn 2014-11-12 11:51:28 -05:00
parent d6bf6f07b1
commit 8a3a8434dd
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gpl-lgpl.tex
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@ -2296,7 +2296,22 @@ termination cannot be cured by obtaining additional copies from an alternate
supplier: the license permissions emanate only from the original licensors,
and if they have automatically terminated permission, no act by any
intermediate license holder can restore those terminated
rights.
rights\footnote{While nearly all attorneys and copyleft theorists are in
agreement on this point, German copyleft legal expert
\href{http://www.jbb.de/en/attorneys/till-jaeger/}{Till Jaeger}
vehemently disagrees. Jaeger's position is as follows: under German
copyright law, a new copy of GPL'd software is a ``fresh'' license under
GPL, and if compliance continues from that point further, the violator's
permissions under copyright law are automatically restored, notwithstanding
the strict termination provision in \hyperref[GPLv2s4]{GPLv2~\S4}.
However, in
practice, this issue is only salient with regard to \hyperref[Proprietary
Relicensing]{proprietary relicensing} business models, since other copyright
holders typically formally restore distributions rights once the only
remaining compliance issue is ``you lost copyright permission due to
GPLv2~\S4''. Therefore, the heated debates, which have raged between
Jaeger and nearly everyone else in the copyleft community for nearly a
decade, are mostly about a nearly moot and esoteric legal detail.}.
\section{GPLv2~\S7: ``Give Software Liberty or Give It Death!''}
\label{GPLv2s7}