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Comment by dangrossman | Hacker News Reader

IANAL: My understanding is that even if he were to revoke the license, any copies you already made under it would remain your legal property, as they were made lawfully. It's the right to copy (naturally the author's exclusive right) the license is giving you. Revoking that right prevents you from making future copies, but would have no power to make you destroy the ones you already have.

Right?

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Nope. If he revokes, you lose the licence, and can't use lamson any more. It's how the GPL works, too.

See this tweet: http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/223966065091284992

Just curious, has that aspect of the GPL ever successfully been held up in court?

Yep, since it's essentially just copyright law with no fancy licence involved: I made X, you're using it without permission.

That's not copyright law. Copyright law governs the right to make copies and distribute copies. Use of a copy you legally acquired can only possibly be restricted by a license agreement; contract law.

No, copyright law refers to the rights of the creator of an original work. Nothing to do with copying, per se.

"Nothing to do with copying"?! If you're going to say such ridiculous things, please stop making legal commentary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_Sta...

Copyright grants 5 exclusive rights to the authors of a work. Two of them are creating copies and distributing copies. Two of the others don't really apply to executing software (public display and performance of audiovisual works), and the last is the creation of derivative works.

What the owners of some copies of code do with them is not something the author gains any control of. That can only be restricted by the license, which as it says, is governed by applicable contract law.

Copyright extends to other rights too, not just copying: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright For instance, your link makes no mention of moral rights.

Also, per se is an important qualifier in that sentence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_phrases_%28P%29#p...

In the case of software licenses such as the GPL, it's a weird amalgalm of the two. The only thing which gives you the right to make a copy of the software and use it is the license. If the license becomes invalid for whatever reason (eg. revoked by Zed) then you have an illegal copy of the software, and are pursued under copyright law, not contract law.

Your analysis here is entirely wrong. Please stop spreading misinformation.

Well how would you explain moral rights then? They're certainly nothing to do with copying.

Your original point (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4242918) is certainly wrong - Zed can revoke the licence at any time, and you have to stop using the software.

In the US, 17 USC 117 disagrees.

No it doesn't. 17 USC 117 refers to software that you already have a licence for, and covers exemptions to copyright. ie. you're allowed to make a backup of software, you're allowed to transfer your licence to someone else and you're allowed to run it if you only use it to fix .

Note the phrasing (from http://www.bitlaw.com/source/17usc/117.html) of these bits:

...all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.

...that lawfully contains an authorized copy of the computer program...

> 17 USC 117 refers to software that you already have a licence for

No, it refers to software that you own a copy of. Termination of a copyright license does not terminate your ownership of copies that you already have, if they were made lawfully and distributed to you lawfully.

A good quick and dirty test to see if you need a copyright license in order to legally do something is to ask yourself what the copyright owner would allege in his pleadings if he were to sue you.

Hmm, maybe you're right, but most software licences that I can lay hands on from a quick Google search (other than the GPL) explicitly mention 'use' and termination. For example, the BSD licence:

  Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, 
  with or without modification, are permitted provided 
  that the following conditions are met:

If what you were saying is true though, it would mean that the BSD licence is essentially unenforceable, since once I have a copy, it can't be taken away.

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