A restrictive(?) LDP License

[Sandy Harris <sandy.harris@sympatico.ca>]

Richard Ames wrote:

> A related and interesting (recent) court result is at
> http://www.nwu.org/tvt/9909vic.htm

That decision shows a writer winning a suit against the NY Times and
various others on the basis that giving them permission to publish
his work in print form did /not/ imply they could use on CD-ROM or
in databases without a further license from him.

So suppose a HowTo author or other LDP writer reverses that and
writes a license that:

Allows:
	free distribution of complete unaltered doc in any
	machine-readable form; over the net, on CD, on disk, ...

	printing of all or part of doc for any purpose except sale

	creation and distribution of altered version under reasonable
	conditions (credit given, pointer to original provided, and
	license retained)

But does not allow /sale/ of any printed form, e.g. in a book or as a
magazine article, without a separate license.

As I read the decision above, this would be enforcable, at least in the
US. Arguably, it is a reasonable thing for an author to do. Almost
certainly, it is within his or her legal rights.

Methinks it would make some publishers happy; by negotiating a suitable
deal with an author they could get copyright protection for their print
output.

I'm not considering doing this myself, and am not much interested in
debating the ethics of it.

My question is whether the LDP would find that an acceptable license.
I'd say they clearly should since the "allows" section above gives
them everything they actually need to achieve sensible LDP goals.


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