What I'd like to see happen is the following steps:
1. Comment and amendments. (During the next 7 days or less)
2. Insertion of appropriate legalese by an attorney on the list.
3. Once comments and amendments have been made, I will post a final version and
collect email addresses to attach to it, then send it to Walnut Creek.
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Walnut Creek recently sent a notice to the faq-maintainers list announcing
its intent to include a snapshot of the FAQ archive on an upcoming CD-ROM.
The notice includes a form for a request not to have a FAQ included.
Many members of the faq-maintainers list are extremely disturbed by this
announcement. While we recognize that CD-ROM publication is a valuable
adjunct to network distribution, we consider Walnut Creek's action to be
unethical, illegal under the Berne Convention, and prejudicial to our
future rights in a way we cannot and will not ignore.
Our ethical objection is that the express wishes of many of the FAQ authors are
being ignored in this procedure. Many FAQs have copyrights requiring
publishers operating either off the Internet or for profit to seek permission
to publish the content. This requirement is not met by Walnut Creek's posting
of a negative-override procedure. Walnut Creek has, under the terms of these
copyrights, an affirmative obligation to seek individual permission from each
such author, and an obligation to *not* publish if that permission is not
obtained.
Our legal objection is that this Walnut Creek's procedure and assumptions are
squarely in violation of the Berne Convention and U.S. copyright law, and is
part of a continuing pattern of infringement which constitutes an actionable
tort.
<insert legal verbiage here>
Even those of us who have elected to permit commercial distribution have
to be concerned that, if we did not object to this infringement, we might be
held through doctrine of laches to have lost our rights to control our own
materials.
And control is the key issue here. We do not propose to hold up Walnut
Creek for royalties; we recognize that the economics of the situation
would make that unreasonable. Walnut Creek's offer of a free CD-ROM to
every author who requests one would be fitting compensation, if compensation
were our sticking-point. It is not.
Nor do we, in general, object to CD-ROM distribution. We wrote these FAQs
to be used and enjoyed. We will be happy to cooperate with Walnut Creek or
any other publisher that demonstrates a good-faith effort to meet the
legal and ethical requirements we have outlined.
We are taking a stand for the right of FAQ authors to have their copyrights,
license terms, and intellectual property honored as fully and fairly as they
would be in any other medium.
We request that Walnut Creek amend its procedure to respect and protect the
right of FAQ authors to control the terms of distribution of their works. We
require that Walnut Creek immediately cease behaving in a manner that puts
these rights at legal risk. We hope that Walnut Creek will demonstrate its
good faith by working constructively with us on developing a permissions
procedure to help protect these rights.
This note is a formal assertion of our rights at law. While a substantial
minority of us are angry enough to sue over the present situation, the list
as a whole hopes that negotiation will allow a repair of our relations with
Walnut Creek, and that we can work together in a way that will set precedents
beneficial to all parties.
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-- Eric S. Raymond <esr@locke.ccil.org> Temporary, we're having DNS trouble -> WWW: //www.ccil.org/~esr/home.html
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