[wp-hackers] Re: Copyright violations by plugin in the WordPress plugin directory.

[David Coppit]

On Sat, 28 Jun 2008, Joost de Valk wrote:

> while I do not include a GPL, the GPL is implicit due to my uploading it to 
> wordpress.org (I'll make sure a next version does carry a GPL btw), if he did 
> not think of it that way, he's breaking "normal" copyright, which would allow 
> me to take out his entire website with a DMCA notice (still not planning on 
> that :) ).

And let's not forget that leaving the GPL out might actually restrict
others even more. i.e. The default position in copyright law is that
others can't copy your stuff, with or without attribution.

This does get a little murky since you uploaded it, which could be
construed as an implicit granting of your code to the public domain---but
I really, really doubt that argument would fly in court.

Hm... Now that I think about it, you could really nail this guy for taking
away your right to control who gets to modify your code. By GPL'ing it he
is telling others they have the right to modify it under the GPL when they
don't.

David

_____________________________________________________________________
David Coppit                           david at coppit.org
The College of William and Mary        http://coppit.org/

This time, let's elect a representative instead of a leader.