[wp-hackers] Licensing and Copyright Issues with the Hello Dolly Plugin

[Ryan Bilesky]

I do think this would constitute fair use, in my non-professional (legally
speaking) opinion.

17 U.S.C. § 107 Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106
and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use
by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by
that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting,
teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or
research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the
use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be
considered shall include:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a
commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

2. the nature of the copyrighted work;

3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the
copyrighted work as a whole; and

4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the
copyrighted work.

On Dec 15, 2010 1:50 PM, "hakre" <hanskrentel at yahoo.de> wrote:
>
>
>> Von: Mark Jaquith <markjaquith at gmail.com>
>> An: wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com
>> Gesendet: Mittwoch, den 15. Dezember 2010, 21:06:29 Uhr
>> Betreff: Re: [wp-hackers] Licensing and Copyright Issues with the Hello
Dolly
>>Plugin
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 12:31 PM, hakre <hanskrentel at yahoo.de> wrote:
>> > In the related ticket #15769[2] lead developer markjaquith wrote[3],
>> > the distribution of the code is intended for "non-commercial" and
>> > "educational" use.
>> >
>> > If the use of the plugin is really limited to non-commercial and edu-
>> > cational use, then this would be incompatible with the GPL as you can
>> > not restrict commercial use of GPLed code.
>>
>> I said *no* such thing. I said "The purpose is non-commercial and,
>> yes, educational." In context, it should be clear that I am talking
>> about the purpose and rationale behind its *existence*, not
>> establishing restrictions on its *use*.
>
> Please don't feel offended. Read my words, we're not far away from each
> other:
>
> I wrote "Intended" you wrote "Purpose".
>
> Then I wrote "IF the use of the plugin is REALLY limited". That's hypo-
> thetical. If you would have written about a concrete limitation you can
bet
> that I would have reacted as concrete to it - not hypothetical.
>
>> It's bewildering that you'd
>> jump to such a bad faith interpretation of my words.
>
> What I think is more important then to assume bad faith is
> to think about the implications this has if the lyrics cause restrictions
> of any kind to the GPLed code.
>
> It has been distributed to millions of sites of which I assume most of
> it's users do not want to violate others license and instead want to
> be able to use wordpress under the GPL in a non-violating way.
>
> That's just very bad news for all users incl. the ones who are developers.
>
>> Regarding copyright and fair use — I weighed in already. This is not
>> an appropriate place to debate the matter.
>
> Sure, as the regulars all know that the selection of the Hello Dolly
Lyrics was
> and is a personal preference by Matt Mullenweg and is not related to
> anything educational. It's just Matt's hobby. He loves jazz. It's a
specific
> text he wanted to have in there. I think that's the whole story behind the

> Hello Dolly lyrics. That's where the plugin has it's name from even.
>
> That's why I would have never argued for fair use.
>
> For the reality we share and in a publicly viewable space, I can only
suggest
> to take care and fix this. Seriously. And with the best intentions.
>
> -- hakre
>
> http://hakre.wordpress.com/
>
>
>
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