Re: Artifex v. Diebold: "The GPL is non-commercial!"

[Hyman Rosen]

Rjack wrote:
> You're starting to reason with all the clarity of a bottle of ink.

It's really very simple. If someone conveys to you a copy
of a covered work (let's say it's via being shipped DVDs,
because downloading confuses the issue of who's making the
copy), under first sale you may then convey that copy to
someone else without needing any license to do so. That
means that you could convey the binary without the source
if you have them on separate media, and the recipient
would have no one from whom to demand the source.

You could even set up a business of doing this, where you
purchase piles of separate DVDs containing the binaries and
the sources from the creators of the covered work, and then
you sell the binary disks while discarding the source disks.

But you cannot convey copies of covered works which you
yourself have made unless you comply with the license.

If all of this seems weird and confusing, it's because the
law wasn't written for an age of ubiquitous and easy copying.
The law is designed by use cases - it wants to have certain
situations work in certain ways (such as being able to sell
used books without needing permission), but then there are
consequences in places unanticipated by the writers.