Transcript of SFP#6 Copyright enforcement with Miriam Ballhausen
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WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:16.760 Welcome to the Software Freedom Podcast. 00:16.760 --> 00:20.520 This podcast is presented to you by the Free Software Foundation Europe. 00:20.520 --> 00:23.520 We are a charity that empowers users to control technology. 00:23.520 --> 00:27.560 I'm Matthias Kirschner, and the President of the Free Software Foundation Europe, and 00:27.560 --> 00:30.640 I'm doing this podcast together with my colleague Bonnie Merring. 00:30.640 --> 00:31.640 Hello. 00:31.640 --> 00:35.440 In this episode, we will talk about copyright enforcement in Free Software. 00:35.440 --> 00:37.440 Our guest is Miriam Bahlhausen. 00:37.440 --> 00:42.520 Miriam Bahlhausen is a German lawyer with the focus on Free Software, data protection 00:42.520 --> 00:43.520 and copyright law. 00:43.520 --> 00:47.800 She's also specialized in Free Software copyright questions. 00:47.800 --> 00:48.800 Hello. 00:48.800 --> 00:49.800 Hello, Miriam. 00:49.800 --> 00:50.800 Good to have you here. 00:50.800 --> 00:55.560 Miriam, can you start to explain how is copyright enforcement free software? 00:55.560 --> 00:59.080 The question for me actually wouldn't be how is copyright enforced in Free Software, 00:59.080 --> 01:03.120 but rather how is copyright enforced in software in general, because Free Software is just 01:03.120 --> 01:09.400 for me as a lawyer, just one aspect of software, and therefore forcing copyrights in Free 01:09.400 --> 01:10.400 Software. 01:10.400 --> 01:12.920 It's just one aspect of enforcement in general. 01:12.920 --> 01:18.800 Chesa, a short question, but what is copyright in general, and what is a license? 01:18.800 --> 01:23.920 So copyright and a license, that's not for me, not really the same thing. 01:23.920 --> 01:30.080 So copyright is just the right in the software, that the author or the employer or someone 01:30.080 --> 01:35.800 who they transferred the copyright to has an interest in has a right in. 01:35.800 --> 01:42.320 The license is really just granting rights to someone else, allowing them to use a software 01:42.320 --> 01:44.360 that I program, for example. 01:44.360 --> 01:49.200 So if I write software and I want Matthias to use this software, I give him a license, 01:49.200 --> 01:51.200 but I am the copyright holder. 01:51.840 --> 01:58.280 Okay, so copyright stays by the person that has the rights over the software and a license 01:58.280 --> 02:00.680 provides the rights to somebody else. 02:00.680 --> 02:02.840 Yes, exactly. 02:02.840 --> 02:07.800 So in Free Software and the license, you always make sure that you transfer the rights or 02:07.800 --> 02:11.280 the freedoms to you study, share and improve the software. 02:11.280 --> 02:13.640 That's the difference to proprietary software. 02:13.640 --> 02:18.520 If one of those freedoms is missing, it's not free software, it's proprietary software. 02:18.640 --> 02:21.960 Yes, that's how I would generally differentiate that, yes. 02:21.960 --> 02:27.120 So why would you now have to enforce a license? 02:28.120 --> 02:33.720 Well, so it may happen that, you know, you license your software under a free software 02:33.720 --> 02:38.000 license or under, you know, a copyright license just in general. 02:38.000 --> 02:42.160 And then whoever you're licensing the software to is using your software, 02:42.160 --> 02:44.040 but they don't comply with the license. 02:44.040 --> 02:48.960 Now that may happen under proprietary licenses, just as much as under free software licenses. 02:48.960 --> 02:54.280 So if you tell them you need to provide, let's say, the license text and they don't, 02:54.280 --> 02:58.920 then they infringe your rights because they don't comply with the license that you were 02:58.920 --> 03:00.160 giving them. 03:00.160 --> 03:02.800 And you know, you may not be happy with that. 03:02.800 --> 03:07.000 And in a case like that, you may want to enforce your rights, not so much because you don't 03:07.000 --> 03:09.320 want to allow them to use your software. 03:09.320 --> 03:12.760 You just granted them very broad rights, right? 03:12.760 --> 03:15.960 But you may want to make sure that they actually comply with the license. 03:15.960 --> 03:19.960 So under these circumstances, it may become relevant that you, you know, enforce your rights 03:19.960 --> 03:26.880 in your copyrights in the software and through that enforce their compliance with the license 03:26.880 --> 03:28.040 text. 03:28.040 --> 03:33.000 Could you give an example how a copyright license could be infringed? 03:33.000 --> 03:35.360 Well, that would be, like I just said, that would be one example. 03:35.360 --> 03:40.120 So they use your software, they include it in a product, the product is distributed, 03:40.120 --> 03:45.720 but there's no license text provided with the product or the source code is missing, 03:45.720 --> 03:46.720 for example. 03:46.720 --> 03:51.640 Or, you know, they don't provide the copyright notices, for example, you know, all of 03:51.640 --> 03:56.800 these could be just infringements that happen quite a lot in practice. 03:56.800 --> 04:02.120 And what are the typical examples for free software specifically, how the software licenses 04:02.120 --> 04:03.440 are infringed? 04:03.440 --> 04:05.400 These are the examples for free software. 04:05.400 --> 04:09.680 So if you're talking proprietary, it's usually more that they are overusing. 04:09.680 --> 04:15.960 So there are more users actually assigned to a software that, you know, the license allows 04:15.960 --> 04:16.960 for. 04:16.960 --> 04:21.160 You're actually using it as software as a service, although you only have like an on-premise 04:21.160 --> 04:22.600 license or something like that. 04:22.600 --> 04:27.800 So that would be examples for proprietary licenses. 04:27.800 --> 04:32.040 Source code missing, license text missing, copyright notices missing, those are the typical 04:32.040 --> 04:36.280 examples for free software infringements or free software license infringements. 04:36.280 --> 04:40.400 What do you mean by license text is missing? 04:40.400 --> 04:45.720 So there would be a case where the product or documentation that's provided with the 04:45.720 --> 04:50.880 product, for example, says, well, this product includes software that's licensed under 04:50.880 --> 04:57.360 the GPL and then there's a link, but you wouldn't have direct access to the full license text. 04:57.360 --> 05:00.440 So you wouldn't get a copy of the full license text. 05:00.440 --> 05:05.360 And therefore, or the reason why that is an issue is because then the user doesn't really 05:05.360 --> 05:08.600 know that they have very extensive rights in their software. 05:08.600 --> 05:13.360 So that's usually the way that is argued or why that becomes an issue. 05:13.360 --> 05:17.720 So if you take the example that there's a free software programmer and she wrote a cool 05:17.720 --> 05:24.200 piece of software and that's then reused by some company in their products and then she 05:24.200 --> 05:29.120 finds out that they are shipping the software in their products, but they don't provide 05:29.120 --> 05:34.360 any license text and thereby people don't know that she wanted other people around the 05:34.360 --> 05:39.280 world to also use study, share and improve the software she wrote. 05:39.280 --> 05:40.480 What can she do then? 05:40.480 --> 05:47.360 Well, so the way it works is because the licenses say you as licensee need to comply with 05:47.360 --> 05:49.320 these and these and these and these requirements. 05:49.320 --> 05:54.080 For example, provide the license text and then goes on to say, and if you don't, you lose 05:54.080 --> 05:56.960 your right in the use of the software. 05:56.960 --> 06:02.880 You then have a copyright infringement because the rights that are initially granted under 06:02.880 --> 06:08.240 the free software license fall apart the moment that a company, for example, doesn't comply 06:08.240 --> 06:10.120 with the license text. 06:10.120 --> 06:14.400 And because you have a copyright infringement, you actually have all the rights that are 06:14.400 --> 06:22.520 available to all copyright holders under the copyright laws that apply to use specifically. 06:22.520 --> 06:25.200 For Germany, of course, that's a German copyright act. 06:25.200 --> 06:29.720 And under the German Copyright Act, you have a right to cease and desist, a right to 06:29.720 --> 06:33.080 claim them, you know, they need to stop doing what they are doing. 06:33.080 --> 06:40.440 They need to provide the license text and for example, damages in cases as well. 06:40.440 --> 06:42.880 You mentioned cease and desist letter. 06:42.880 --> 06:46.520 What is this exactly and how does it look? 06:46.520 --> 06:53.840 So a cease and desist letter is at least for Germany the first step in proceedings to 06:53.840 --> 06:56.920 enforce your rights in software. 06:56.920 --> 07:01.320 What you need to do, for example, to avoid costs is send out the cease and desist letter 07:01.320 --> 07:04.800 that essentially says, hey, you're using my software. 07:04.800 --> 07:08.880 I'm granting broad rights to this software to you. 07:08.880 --> 07:14.120 But I also ask that you comply with these and these and these requirements. 07:14.120 --> 07:17.040 And if you don't, you know, you're actually infringing my copyrights. 07:17.040 --> 07:19.400 I want you to stop doing that. 07:19.400 --> 07:25.800 And I also want you to stop doing that going forward whenever you continue to use my software. 07:25.800 --> 07:31.840 So it's really like a formal letter asking someone else to stop the license infringement 07:31.840 --> 07:34.160 and therefore the copyright infringement. 07:34.160 --> 07:40.440 For example, many years ago, I then got a call here in the office from a company, oh, 07:40.440 --> 07:46.800 we got a letter here from someone called Harold Welter and he writes that we cannot use 07:46.800 --> 07:49.520 free software the way we did here. 07:49.520 --> 07:50.520 What is this about? 07:50.520 --> 07:55.320 And in the letter says something about we have two public source code and provide a license 07:55.320 --> 07:56.320 text. 07:56.320 --> 07:58.120 So that's what you were describing here. 07:58.120 --> 07:59.120 Yes, exactly. 07:59.120 --> 08:03.320 Can you explain how that worked in practice in Germany then? 08:03.320 --> 08:09.480 I mean, are there many, many cases around Europe about enforcing free software licenses 08:09.480 --> 08:13.600 or how does it usually happen? 08:13.600 --> 08:18.680 Well, around Europe, not so much in Germany, yes, there are quite a few cases. 08:18.680 --> 08:25.200 Of course, if you're not working for the right holders, you can't really tell how many 08:25.200 --> 08:27.720 cases there are exactly. 08:27.720 --> 08:33.760 But as an average, if you look at just the file numbers that those actually enforcing their 08:33.760 --> 08:39.120 rights in free software are using, you can tell that there's an average between, let's 08:39.120 --> 08:45.360 say, five to 10 cases per month, which means, you know, obviously, around about a hundred 08:45.360 --> 08:48.240 to 120 cases per year. 08:48.240 --> 08:50.520 Not all of these cases actually end up in court. 08:50.520 --> 08:54.520 There's a lot of, like, out of court enforcement as well, which is, you know, just the season 08:54.520 --> 08:55.520 to sister letter. 08:55.520 --> 09:01.080 And then you handle that out of court by settlement, you know, whatever way is available. 09:01.080 --> 09:04.760 But that's about the number that we're talking about for Germany, yeah. 09:04.760 --> 09:09.960 In the past, I mean, the FSFE also worked with Harold Welton, GPL violations, to make 09:09.960 --> 09:12.720 sure that free software licenses are enforced. 09:12.720 --> 09:18.680 And there's also around the world, there's the software freedom, conservancy, net filter, 09:18.680 --> 09:23.680 and the FSF who were doing this kind of license enforcement, where there are any others who 09:23.680 --> 09:24.840 are doing this. 09:24.840 --> 09:32.160 Well, right now, we have, of course, someone else in Germany who's, you know, often enforcing 09:32.160 --> 09:33.400 their rights. 09:33.400 --> 09:37.240 But apart from that, you know, there are individual cases around the world. 09:37.240 --> 09:42.320 I think Israel, there were a few, you know, there were just a few cases, but it's not that 09:42.320 --> 09:45.400 much compared to what we're seeing in Germany. 09:45.400 --> 09:49.160 There's just a lot more happening here. 09:49.160 --> 09:52.840 Why is copyright in FSF so often enforced in Germany? 09:52.840 --> 10:00.960 Well, I think it's because the German Copyright Act is just really favorable to rightholders 10:00.960 --> 10:08.080 and the measures that are available to rightholders are just, you know, easily handled by them, 10:08.080 --> 10:12.000 or they are just easily accessible to rightholders. 10:12.000 --> 10:17.560 Furthermore, you have strict rules on the costs. 10:17.560 --> 10:23.400 So in Germany, lawyers are not allowed to undercharge, but they are also, you know, strictly 10:23.400 --> 10:26.000 regulated what they can actually charge. 10:26.000 --> 10:31.680 And there's a statutory fee that you need to pay that is actually calculated on, based 10:31.680 --> 10:35.360 on the worth of the case, you know, there's a lot of rules around that. 10:35.360 --> 10:42.280 But what I mean to say is, you know, upfront, what this will cost you if you lose the case, 10:42.280 --> 10:45.720 which is really the only scenario that you need to be worried about. 10:45.720 --> 10:50.040 So if you start enforcing your rights, you know, well, if this goes badly for me, this 10:50.040 --> 10:51.800 is what it will cost me. 10:51.800 --> 10:57.480 But this is also exactly what I will make if I actually win this case. 10:57.480 --> 11:01.640 That's one thing why taking risk is actually why there's actually not so much of a risk 11:01.640 --> 11:04.800 if you start enforcing your rights as a rightholder. 11:04.800 --> 11:10.640 Then additionally, if you go and send out a seasoned assist letter, there's a second step 11:10.640 --> 11:13.960 where you can ask for a preliminary injunction. 11:13.960 --> 11:19.200 So you send out the seasoned assist letter, you give the infringer a very short deadline 11:19.200 --> 11:21.000 to reply to this seasoned assist letter. 11:21.000 --> 11:25.840 If you don't hear back from them, you can actually claim this preliminary injunction. 11:25.840 --> 11:32.840 If you're lucky as a as a rightholder, this injunction gets granted within days, sometimes 11:32.840 --> 11:39.080 within hours, depends on how bad this case is or how, you know, what kind of stands the 11:39.080 --> 11:42.080 court takes on this. 11:42.080 --> 11:46.760 And then, you know, once this preliminary injunction is granted, that is sent to the infringer 11:46.760 --> 11:50.920 and they actually need to stop distributing their products immediately. 11:50.920 --> 11:56.240 So if you're a big company using free software, allegedly infringing these rights, you're 11:56.240 --> 12:02.400 immediately facing the risk of having to stop distributing your products, right? 12:02.400 --> 12:05.920 And of course, that's something you would not want to happen. 12:05.920 --> 12:09.960 And with that in mind, it just, you know, makes it rather easy for the infringer to enforce 12:09.960 --> 12:15.800 their rights because they always have this threat, you could call it at times, where they 12:15.800 --> 12:19.920 can easily, you know, tell you, this is what I want you to do. 12:19.920 --> 12:23.640 And if you don't, I get this preliminary injunction, you need to stop distributing your 12:23.640 --> 12:24.640 products. 12:24.640 --> 12:31.520 A lot of companies, they are, of course, very upset if they realize that they have such 12:31.520 --> 12:35.720 a problem in their products because I mean, free software is meanwhile used in so many 12:35.720 --> 12:37.560 products around the world. 12:37.560 --> 12:43.480 And when you as a company, you distribute many products, including, including software 12:43.480 --> 12:46.280 and free software license. 12:46.280 --> 12:51.600 So when they receive such a season, this is letter that can mean that they are in huge 12:51.600 --> 12:52.760 trouble. 12:52.760 --> 13:01.360 And in the, in the recent months, I also experienced that some of them had the feeling that a license 13:01.360 --> 13:05.960 enforcement in free software became way more aggressive. 13:05.960 --> 13:11.880 And so my question is, I mean, you, you have also seen like how a hard value with GPL violations 13:11.880 --> 13:18.520 has enforced free software in the past, is there now, is that now done differently? 13:18.520 --> 13:23.320 Well, I think it depends on the exact case at hand and it sometimes also depends on the 13:23.320 --> 13:27.200 month that you received the season to assist letter, really. 13:27.200 --> 13:33.480 I think at least from, from what I understand, you know, it's now become more aggressive 13:33.480 --> 13:41.840 in a way that the focus is more on making money out of it and less on making sure 13:42.840 --> 13:47.640 the company, the licensee really complies with the license. 13:47.640 --> 13:51.480 And that of course shifts how you negotiate, for example, a settlement, right? 13:51.480 --> 13:57.760 If you're really focused on enforcement, things like, you know, we'll have a settlement 13:57.760 --> 14:01.960 that actually gives the company a little bit time, a little bit more time to become compliant 14:01.960 --> 14:04.960 if you really feel they have an interest in that. 14:04.960 --> 14:09.480 And you know, there's constraints that they may not be able to work around immediately, 14:09.480 --> 14:13.160 but they will want to work towards that. 14:13.160 --> 14:18.120 There's obviously a different negotiation going on than compared to a case where you really 14:18.120 --> 14:23.360 just want to make as much money out of this as you possibly can, then you may not want 14:23.360 --> 14:28.400 to reveal such constraints and you know, you cannot really find a workaround around situation 14:28.400 --> 14:29.400 like that. 14:29.400 --> 14:31.280 So yeah, that's the difference I see. 14:31.280 --> 14:36.120 But as I said, you know, there have been cases on both ends, even with the enforcement 14:36.120 --> 14:37.800 going on right now. 14:38.760 --> 14:43.280 So I mean, as one response, also some free software organizations, including our sister 14:43.280 --> 14:49.480 organization, the FSF in the US, they formulated some policies how to do free software license 14:49.480 --> 14:52.040 compliance in a community-friendly way. 14:52.040 --> 14:57.240 So would you say that this is something which was needed because it was actually not done 14:57.240 --> 14:58.240 that way before? 14:58.240 --> 14:59.240 Yes. 14:59.240 --> 15:03.960 Yes, in my opinion, that actually did make sense because I mean, I don't know if it 15:03.960 --> 15:10.280 is ever going to help in court, but at least it lays down rules how you would want that 15:10.280 --> 15:11.640 to be done. 15:11.640 --> 15:16.400 And you could at least theoretically point out, well, the way this enforcement is done 15:16.400 --> 15:20.680 is actually not how these licenses were supposed to be enforced, right? 15:20.680 --> 15:25.440 Like I said, I'm not sure that would actually give you as a company illegal argument against 15:25.440 --> 15:29.680 such enforcement if that ever happens in court, but at least there's something available 15:29.680 --> 15:31.560 that you could point to. 15:31.560 --> 15:35.080 So those guidelines are also legally binding. 15:35.080 --> 15:39.040 Well, but just for those who actually signed them, right? 15:39.040 --> 15:44.840 If those enforcing the rights did not sign them, did not agree to them, I would personally 15:44.840 --> 15:50.240 say there's probably little you can do, like strictly legal that you can do with these 15:50.240 --> 15:54.840 guidelines, but it's of course good to have such guidelines because otherwise you really 15:54.840 --> 15:59.960 have no documentation how everyone else would want the enforcement to be done, right? 15:59.960 --> 16:04.760 And you can't really argue, well, this is the outlier here, and this way of enforcement 16:04.760 --> 16:09.040 is really not community friendly and the rest of the community does not like this. 16:09.040 --> 16:11.960 From that perspective, I think it's good. 16:11.960 --> 16:14.640 The other part, of course, is there as well, right? 16:14.640 --> 16:16.960 It's not a strictly legal argument. 16:16.960 --> 16:21.320 Looking back a little bit of what we talked about the last minutes, you could get impression 16:21.320 --> 16:26.200 that being compliant with free software licenses is very complicated. 16:26.200 --> 16:28.520 What would you reply to this? 16:28.520 --> 16:32.640 It is, if you start looking at it only at the end, when you actually want to go to market 16:32.640 --> 16:38.760 with your product, if you have processes in place and actually make sure everyone within 16:38.760 --> 16:43.160 your company is, or everyone at least working with the software within your company is 16:43.160 --> 16:49.920 aware of what free software means, I have a feeling it is actually not all that hard. 16:49.920 --> 16:55.760 And even more broadly speaking, there's always the way to make the source code available, 16:55.760 --> 16:56.760 right? 16:56.760 --> 17:02.280 If you do that, I think it actually becomes a lot less hard than what you would say, 17:02.280 --> 17:04.440 you know, if you're trying to find workarounds. 17:04.440 --> 17:10.320 So that means that if it's just complicated, if you do not want to directly publish the 17:10.320 --> 17:15.080 source code, at least it becomes a lot harder, right? 17:15.080 --> 17:18.320 Because you need to make sure, you know, what are the applicable licenses? 17:18.320 --> 17:22.800 So you need to look a lot closer than saying, okay, this is the source code I received, 17:22.800 --> 17:26.640 this is what I'm working with, this is what I need to make sure I make available with 17:26.680 --> 17:28.280 the product at the end. 17:28.280 --> 17:33.000 Of course, fully understood, there are, you know, products where making the source code 17:33.000 --> 17:39.480 available may be a lot harder, especially given that you can't simply link to the source 17:39.480 --> 17:41.520 code under most licenses, right? 17:41.520 --> 17:46.000 So if you have a product, a physical product, and the source code needs to be on there 17:46.000 --> 17:53.320 in addition to whatever else you need on your product, that may actually be a challenge. 17:53.320 --> 17:59.320 What are the steps to make sure that you don't infringe the free software license? 17:59.320 --> 18:04.520 First of all, you need to know what software you're actually using. 18:04.520 --> 18:09.160 And to be honest, that is often, at least, you know, when working with companies, that's 18:09.160 --> 18:13.400 often the biggest challenge, because you have so many, you know, individual developers 18:13.400 --> 18:16.360 working on the software or even teams, right? 18:16.360 --> 18:19.560 And you can't really know what is in there. 18:19.600 --> 18:24.760 And of course, you know, they try things, they include software and you don't know what 18:24.760 --> 18:27.400 licenses apply to the software. 18:27.400 --> 18:32.400 That is, in my opinion, the key step to make sure you have a process where you actually 18:32.400 --> 18:35.800 know what the software is that goes in there. 18:35.800 --> 18:39.160 And once you know what you have in there, of course, you need to identify, you know, what 18:39.160 --> 18:45.200 are the different license requirements, license obligations that you need to, you know, 18:45.240 --> 18:49.680 look out for, but really, that is a second step. 18:49.680 --> 18:55.640 And at least from my perspective, not that hard, once you really know what you're using 18:55.640 --> 18:57.280 within your product. 18:57.280 --> 19:00.920 And then the second thing is really mostly about the process. 19:00.920 --> 19:02.520 Make sure you know what it is. 19:02.520 --> 19:08.320 Make sure you identify the license obligations and make sure you have a process in place. 19:08.320 --> 19:12.760 How you would want to comply with these obligations, you know, do you want to provide the source 19:12.760 --> 19:13.760 code? 19:13.760 --> 19:14.960 Is it not possible? 19:14.960 --> 19:19.440 And then you need to maybe find a workaround to still make sure you're 100% compliant. 19:19.440 --> 19:23.960 Yeah, that's really often a case-by-case decision on what works for the company and often 19:23.960 --> 19:30.400 even within companies, a decision, you know, from product to product because different 19:30.400 --> 19:34.480 products may just need to do this differently. 19:34.480 --> 19:40.040 We have this nice tool called Reuse, which adds a little header with all the licensing and 19:40.040 --> 19:42.360 copyright information to the software parts. 19:42.360 --> 19:44.840 Do you think this could actually help with this? 19:44.840 --> 19:51.400 Well, as I said, the most important step is mostly to find out what licenses apply. 19:51.400 --> 19:59.880 And in practice, finding that out is often hard because there's no standard way of quoting 19:59.880 --> 20:03.200 these licenses or referring to these licenses. 20:03.200 --> 20:09.640 So unless you're really going through all the texts manually, which is not possible, in 20:09.680 --> 20:15.800 most cases, you need to be really sophisticated about identifying these different references 20:15.800 --> 20:20.400 and making sure to identify the licenses. 20:20.400 --> 20:26.160 If there was a standard way, like Reuse is introducing to actually quote these licenses 20:26.160 --> 20:31.880 and if they, you know, were found at the same spot every time, that would make it a lot 20:31.880 --> 20:34.760 easier to identify the applicable license. 20:34.760 --> 20:38.800 And as I said, once you know what's in there and what applies, then actually working 20:38.800 --> 20:42.360 through the following steps of saying, okay, these are the requirements, these are the 20:42.360 --> 20:43.360 obligations. 20:43.360 --> 20:46.040 This is what I need to do and this is how we'll do it in practice. 20:46.040 --> 20:49.440 That becomes a lot easier because you know what you're working with. 20:49.440 --> 20:50.440 So yes. 20:50.440 --> 20:55.200 If there's a free software program and ask what are the most important things to remember 20:55.200 --> 21:00.840 when I started writing a new free software project, if you tell them for every file you 21:00.840 --> 21:07.040 create at a line on the top page to write down under which free software license you would 21:07.040 --> 21:08.040 like to license it. 21:08.040 --> 21:09.040 Yes. 21:09.040 --> 21:12.200 I mean, on Reuse.soft you can see how we recommend doing that. 21:12.200 --> 21:17.320 And if you then also include the full text of this license, which you named there, then 21:17.320 --> 21:21.840 you would say it's already a huge step to make sure that the rights you would like to 21:21.840 --> 21:26.480 grant others and the obligations you would like others to adhere to, that this is also 21:26.480 --> 21:31.400 then enforced and people and companies can make sure they are compliant with what you wish. 21:31.400 --> 21:34.800 It will definitely make it a lot easier, yes. 21:34.800 --> 21:39.200 That's because you can look at everything or every single file and see, you know, this 21:39.200 --> 21:46.960 is what they wanted for this specific file, for this software in general, yes. 21:46.960 --> 21:53.440 Assuming back out to one other part, I mean, now with all those things to think about for 21:53.440 --> 22:00.720 compliance, is it easier to be compliant with proprietary software licenses? 22:00.720 --> 22:08.480 I don't think so, just because the proprietary licenses aren't as similar as the open source 22:08.480 --> 22:10.880 in free software licenses. 22:10.880 --> 22:16.920 If you really look at the obligations and requirements, of course, yes, there are differences, but 22:16.920 --> 22:22.240 even though there are hundreds of free software licenses out there, it really comes down to 22:22.240 --> 22:27.800 a handful of obligation and requirements that you need to comply with when looking at 22:28.280 --> 22:29.280 free software. 22:29.280 --> 22:37.280 So, complying with that is actually rather similar irrespective of the license that you're 22:37.280 --> 22:38.440 really using, yes. 22:38.440 --> 22:41.920 As I said, of course, in detail, there are differences. 22:41.920 --> 22:46.600 If you look at proprietary licenses, they are often considerably longer than free software 22:46.600 --> 22:51.600 licenses and there are differences in detail and it also depends on, you know, what is your 22:51.600 --> 22:52.600 use case? 22:52.720 --> 22:58.080 Often different licenses for, as I said, software has a service and then on premise licenses 22:58.080 --> 23:03.360 or per user, there's just a lot of difference, which is perfectly understandable because, 23:03.360 --> 23:08.400 you know, your software may be written for a different scenario, but yeah, it's just harder 23:08.400 --> 23:13.840 because you need to look at every single license, whereas with free software licenses, you 23:13.840 --> 23:20.680 know, at least there's an average you can make. 23:20.680 --> 23:25.680 Is there a difference in suing free software copyright violations and proprietary copyright 23:25.680 --> 23:27.200 violations? 23:27.200 --> 23:30.600 Not really, at least not from a copyright perspective, right? 23:30.600 --> 23:36.360 So, it's always about the license infringement or the copyright infringement, which gives 23:36.360 --> 23:40.680 you kind of the entrance to enforcing your copyrights. 23:40.680 --> 23:41.520 You'll need that. 23:41.520 --> 23:46.560 If you want to enforce your copyright, you'll need that infringement in both cases, right? 23:46.560 --> 23:53.440 I think with free software, it may be a bit easier to establish the infringements just 23:53.440 --> 23:59.440 because, you know, if the source code's not available, you can easily establish that, right? 23:59.440 --> 24:01.760 That may be a difference, but that's more practical difference. 24:01.760 --> 24:05.000 It's not really a legal difference, right? 24:05.000 --> 24:11.320 Would you say that in today's world where free software is used more and more in all kind 24:11.320 --> 24:20.480 of products, from very small devices to big servers, super computers, are the copyright 24:20.480 --> 24:26.640 law, which we have in Europe, are they up to those wide use of free software? 24:26.640 --> 24:30.880 Well, that depends on what you're looking at, I think. 24:30.880 --> 24:35.200 If you're looking at compliance, which is really what we talked about today, I think they 24:35.200 --> 24:40.320 are, just because it really, you know, that's not a question of copyright as such. 24:40.320 --> 24:45.880 Of course, the free software licenses are kind of embedded in the copyright laws, but 24:45.880 --> 24:50.520 the compliance aspects really are a question of the individual license. 24:50.520 --> 24:55.040 And then it's just what are your claims that you can make on a copyright law, right? 24:55.040 --> 24:56.600 So that's the only connection there. 24:56.600 --> 25:00.440 And if you look at the claims, you know, they are pretty average. 25:00.440 --> 25:05.240 That's, you know, just the standard claims that you would expect to have in case of infringement. 25:05.240 --> 25:10.200 If you look at like the more proactive part and not the, not the compliance, I'm using 25:10.200 --> 25:16.000 your software and need to comply with the license aspect, I think there are indeed some issues. 25:16.000 --> 25:20.800 So if you look, for example, at the newest copyright directive for the EU, there were heavy 25:20.800 --> 25:26.080 discussions whether, you know, all of these obligations that host providers, for example, 25:26.080 --> 25:30.360 have actually work for free software and distributing free software. 25:30.360 --> 25:37.320 So I think, you know, that is probably, or in that area, it's probably not so much the 25:37.320 --> 25:47.760 case that the current laws actually, you know, meet all the needs of free software. 25:47.760 --> 25:51.280 Miriam, you probably know that we regularly have to sell our free software day, but we 25:51.280 --> 25:55.120 are saying developers for the effort at work, and I wanted to know if you want to thank 25:55.120 --> 26:01.800 somebody for their work or mention of software. 26:01.800 --> 26:07.480 Not so much, thank you, but what I really liked or where was really, you know, positively 26:07.480 --> 26:13.520 surprised, as you mentioned in the beginnings, I'm doing data protection and GDPR and free 26:13.520 --> 26:15.200 software, kind of the mix. 26:15.200 --> 26:21.760 And when the GDPR first became applicable, the Knew, which is the supervisory authority 26:21.760 --> 26:28.520 in France, they published their data protection impact assessment tool under GPL 3. 26:28.520 --> 26:33.200 And it was just broadly available and, you know, they really did a nice job complying 26:33.200 --> 26:38.840 with the requirements, and it just made me personally really happy to see this overlap. 26:38.840 --> 26:44.000 And you know, then you could actually go through it, and it made it a lot easier for companies 26:44.000 --> 26:47.960 to actually look at this tool and say, well, is this something that we could work with? 26:47.960 --> 26:53.680 Because this is, at least for Germany, a totally new requirement that we now need to meet 26:53.680 --> 27:00.720 under the GDPR, can we work with free software, and can we make this thing work for us? 27:00.720 --> 27:05.600 And I thought that was a great idea, you know, to do it that way and, you know, to actually 27:05.600 --> 27:08.720 do a nice job publishing that. 27:08.720 --> 27:14.320 So yeah, if I wanted to mention something, that would be my mention here. 27:14.320 --> 27:15.320 Thank you. 27:15.320 --> 27:16.320 Thank you very much, medium. 27:16.320 --> 27:17.320 It was a pleasure. 27:17.840 --> 27:19.240 Thank you, Miriam. 27:19.240 --> 27:21.440 This was the Software Freedom Podcast. 27:21.440 --> 27:25.800 If you liked this episode, please recommend it to your friends and rate it. 27:25.800 --> 27:31.080 You can also subscribe to make sure you will get the next episode. 27:31.080 --> 27:34.640 This podcast is presented to you by the free Software Foundation Europe. 27:34.640 --> 27:37.760 We are a charity that works on promoting Software Freedom. 27:37.760 --> 27:41.240 If you like our work, please consider supporting us with a donation. 27:41.240 --> 27:44.680 You'll find more information on www.fsafety.org slash donate. 27:47.320 --> 28:05.480 And here is another voice from our community saying why they support the FSE. 28:05.480 --> 28:06.960 So my name is Christian. 28:06.960 --> 28:09.880 I'm a biomedical scientist. 28:09.880 --> 28:15.640 I've been with the FSE for approximately five years now. 28:15.640 --> 28:22.560 And I support the FSE because I think that Free Software is an integral component for 28:22.560 --> 28:25.040 digital sustainability.