Calibre and GNU GPL

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by user_none

In the US the copyright must be registered with the copyright office to sue for damages.

This is a good point. Yes, registration is required, although as you note, that can be done at any time. I presume calibre copyright is not registered. I haven't even seen a copyright notice (although I haven't looked).

I believe that there is also a limit on the amount depending on when it was registered. Such as if it took place the day before filing the suit.

If it's not registered within 3 months of the date of first publication, under U.S. law, the copyright owner can't be awarded attorney fees or statutory damages.

Statutory damages cover situations where the copyright owner can't prove damages. It would be very hard to establish any "damages" for infringement, so it again boils down to the likelihood that in the remotely unlikely scenario of a claim of GPL violation, the worst that would happen is the content would have to be edited to remove the GPL content added during the conversion.

There's an adjustment to the max/min amount of recovery when the infringement is "innocent."

It's just so unlikely as to be laughable, even if it is interesting to explore the limits of how the GPL applies.

And how many angels do you think can dance on the head of this pin?

[Stodder]

Hi Starson17. Thanks for sharing your opinion on this, but could I ask for some clarification?

And suppose someone claimed that the GPL did apply to a chunk of output by some strained GPL interpretation that the CSS, HTML or formatting was "code" covered under the GPL. Because the GPL only applies when the "code" is redistributed, all the user would have to do is reformat the content with their own formatting or remove the allegedly GPL code, (or get a license from the code copyright holder). AFAIK, there has never been a case where anyone has had to pay damages for past violation of the GPL, so simply removing the alleged GPL content would fix the problem.

Yes, I understand that you can reformat or remove "alleged" GPL code, but what happens if you have already distributed the file? Isn't it "out there" and untouchable by any reformatting?

Additionally, does it go against the GPL for an end-user to intentionally remove program metadata? I.e. taking out the "OpenOffice.org" references in an OpenOffice.org PDF?

I know this thread is dealing with hypotheticals now, but it's been really interesting reading your responses and thank you all for taking the time to respond.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by Stodder

Additionally, does it go against the GPL for an end-user to intentionally remove program metadata? I.e. taking out the "OpenOffice.org" references in an OpenOffice.org PDF?

No.

The whole point of the GPL is so that people can't take programs that other people have written, make some change to them or incorporate them into something else ('wrapping' in particular) and make the resulting program proprietary. It's not about metadata, stylesheets, or anything else -- just about keeping people from taking a program, claiming it's theirs now, and saying if you want to use it, you have to pay them.

The details are more complicated than that (all details are more complicated) but that's how it works out. Metadata doesn't come into it at all. It's just a license, and it just grants rights for what you can do with the source code. If you're not distributing binaries of a GPL-licensed program, it doesn't matter to you at all.

By the way, there's nothing "alleged" about it. The author of the program chooses to use the GPL instead of any of a number of other licenses available, as is his right, and so it goes.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Stodder

Yes, I understand that you can reformat or remove "alleged" GPL code, but what happens if you have already distributed the file? Isn't it "out there" and untouchable by any reformatting?

Yes, but so what? The GPL promotes such distribution - it doesn't prohibit it. There aren't any "damages" for the alleged violation. There's never been a case of damages awarded for a GPL violation that I know of.

More importantly, however, I just can't imagine a court concluding that adding limited formatting code (as in a format conversion) would be sufficient for the GPL to apply to non-GPL input content, such as an e-book.

Additionally, does it go against the GPL for an end-user to intentionally remove program metadata? I.e. taking out the "OpenOffice.org" references in an OpenOffice.org PDF?

I don't know about OpenOffice, but nothing in the GPL requires anything to be applied to the output, nor is there any prohibition on removing anything from output. Using a GPL program to produce output is not the same thing as distributing the GPL code itself.

If you have some specific scenario in mind that is of concern to you, why not spell it out?

[user_none]

One things I would like to point out specifically for Stodder is the GPL is a copyright license. The GPL spells out what rights the author is granting to you for their licensed work under copyright law. While copyright is consistant across most of the work each county can have slight differences and their courts can interpret aspects of the GPL differently. Such as a German court could say the GPL is 100% invalid and un-enforceable (hasn't happended and there has been one German case which upheld the terms of the GPL), while a Canadian court could say the opposite.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by user_none

One things I would like to point out specifically for Stodder is the GPL is a copyright license.

Yes. Plus, the GPL is a license, and like any agreement, for it to apply, there must have been a meeting of the minds - an intent by both sides that the agreement be entered into. In the case of output, I doubt that either side - those who wrote the GPL code and those who used it to create output - ever intended for the GPL to apply to the converted output.

There are dozens of reasons why the GPL is not a problem for converted calibre output.

[Stodder]

Hi guys,

I don't think I have anymore questions. But thanks again for taking the time to respond. You've given me lots to think on.

I'm really enjoying the mobileread forums in general.

Stodder.