Re:Copyleft terms may become unenforceable in 11 countries d...
by jasode on Thursday June 14, 2018 @05:37PM
(#17315624)
> If the intent of the treaty were to make copyleft unenforceable,
I think the consensus is that is not the intent. The OSIA and Linux Journal concern is the unintended alternative interpretation of the text.
Re:Copyleft terms may become unenforceable in 11 countries d...
by jcranmer on Thursday June 14, 2018 @06:01PM
(#17315811)
I explained how SCOTUS would explain what the text means under the guideline of legislative intent (you'd probably arrive at the same conclusion under the principle of plain meaning). Legislative intent is explicitly trying to understand what a law means by understanding what the legislature intended it to mean, so whatever funky definition the OSIA and Linux Journal comes up is completely and totally irrelevant under that standard.
I don't know the jurisprudence of Australian law to understand how Australian courts would interpret the text, but I would honestly be surprised if OSIA's purported interpretation were accepted.
I'm going a bit of a limb here in applying SCOTUS principles to how to read law, as we're not talking about US jurisdiction, but since Australia is also a common law country, I'd assume that the principles are basically the same. One basic principle of determining different interpretations is that you have to ask "is there a clearer way to write this interpretation?" If the intent of the treaty were to make copyleft unenforceable, the text included would be along the lines of "No party shall permit a person to require the disclosure of source code." Indeed, if you read some of the other articles in that chapter, there is actually text that says "No party shall require a covered person..." This does signal that there is intent that the text of Article 14.17 apply onto the government and not to the general public within a country.