[mythtv-users] Boxee/Hulu?

Eric Sharkey eric at lisaneric.org
Sun Mar 1 09:28:49 UTC 2009


On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 1:26 AM, Michael T. Dean <mtdean at thirdcontact.com> wrote:
> On 02/28/2009 01:19 AM, David Brodbeck wrote:
>>
>> It's not really analogous to the Hulu issue, though, because that content
>> is offered for free anyway.
>
> Free of charge does not mean free of license...  Didn't GNU teach us
> anything?

The GNU general public license is a perfect example.

It's one of the few licenses that spell out explicitly that you are
not bound by it:

    5.  You are not required to accept this License, since
    you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you
    permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative
    works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept
    this License.

In other words, you are always free to ignore any license on any copyrighted
material and treat the work as if it said "all rights reserved" in which case
normal copyright law applies.

What we're saying in this discussion is that we think the terms requested
by Hulu are onerous and as such we're going to treat their works using
an "all rights reserved" license (i.e. no license).  Fair use still applies and
as long as no redistribution or public performance or any other
prohibited activity takes place, it's all perfectly legal.

Eric


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list