[cl-debian] cl-rfc2109: requesting comments

John Halton johnhalton at gmail.com
Tue Nov 27 22:06:17 UTC 2007


On Tue, Nov 27, 2007 at 06:58:14PM +0100, Pierre THIERRY wrote:
> Now that I think of it, quoting a copyrighted material doesn't give you
> free material: you're not allowed to modify this quoted part, or you
> would denature the original work, which is in utter violation of the
> copyright, AFAIK. So it would still be better to remove those parts of
> the RFC.

I'm still not sure that quoting such small parts of the RFC would
infringe copyright, even if they are modified. Infringement of
copyright requires either the whole or a "substantial part" of the
copyright work to be copied, and I'm not convinced the headings would
constitute a "substantial part". But that's the issue, rather than
whether they are modified or not.

(Incidentally, I suspect the question of modifying the quoted sections
would become relevant when assessing "fair use", but I assume the
policy is not to rely on "fair use" given that it is a US-centric
concept.)

However, as I said before the safest approach (while still retaining
some usefulness) is to remove the text of the headings while retaining
the paragraph numbering. So it sounds like we're agreed on the
practical action (unless you think the paragraph numbers should be
removed as well, which I think would be over-cautious).

John

(TINLA)



More information about the Cl-debian mailing list