[asterisk-users] HR 5889.

[Tilghman Lesher]

On Saturday 05 July 2008 20:01:19 Alex Balashov wrote:
> Tilghman Lesher wrote:
> > After reading the bill in question, I have little doubt that the authors
> > of that blog piece are, to put it mildly, full of it.  HR 5889 makes
> > clear mention of the diligence that is required
>
> What would it take to retroactively conjure the due diligence?

The bill makes it clear that evidence must be provided that the due diligence
was done prior to the infringement or else the defense is not valid.  It would
be fairly difficult to forge phone records or a record that an email was sent
and have it stand up in court.  Any person who wants their diligence to stand
up in court is going to have to be very careful.

I have some history with the other side of this question.  I've been active
with the Apple II community in the past, and finding legitimate titles in
print has been very difficult.  Remaining on the correct side of the law for
many of these works is very difficult, where even the author doesn't know if
they have the rights to the title or if their publishing company, long out of
business, has those rights.  Without a clear law to distinguish how a
reproduction right can be established, many of those software titles might be
lost forever.  Tracking down the rights holders is very difficult, time-
consuming, and has no guarantee of success.

In certain cases where both the publisher and the author are able to be
contacted, sometimes neither are willing to grant the rights, because they
simply aren't sure who owns the copyright.  The author points at the
publisher, and the publisher points back to the author.  Neither wants to be
on the wrong side of the law.

By the way, just to keep this on topic, Mark long ago printed out the source
code to Asterisk and registered the code with the Copyright Office.  What is
there now can be considered a derivative work of that original piece, so the
Asterisk source is fairly safe from these techniques.  So as Alex correctly
pointed out, even if this were a problem to other projects, Asterisk is safe.

-- 
Tilghman