The rise of copyright trolls [LWN.net]

The rise of copyright trolls

Posted May 3, 2017 16:00 UTC (Wed) by aggelos (subscriber, #41752)
Parent article: The rise of copyright trolls

The Q&A session after that (under Chatham House Rule) was lively, with some strong opinions expressed. There was talk of codifying a social contract for our communities; putting together the various factions within the open-source community to help determine what that contract might look like is planned.

Was there any talk of what the participants felt is lacking from the principles of community-oriented GPL enforcement published by SFC and the FSF in response to the McHardy situation? The summary quoted here implies that this document was either not discussed (though it defies belief that the people present were not aware of it[0]) or disliked. What were the reasons?

[0] The LWN editor who attended and summarized the discussion is certainly aware of that too. It is odd not to see any mention of there being "divergent efforts" (as it would most likely be put in the familiar LWN tone) in the article either.

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The rise of copyright trolls

Posted May 3, 2017 16:46 UTC (Wed) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (1 responses)

The perceived problem seems to be not that something is lacking from that text, but that some people enforce their copyright for monetary gain instead of for resolving the actual problem.

Quite frankly: that's their prerogative.

However, if the community-oriented enforcer asks for compliance first AND if the company in question can demonstrate an ongoing good-faith effort to resolve the issue, then the monetary-gain-oriented enforcer does not have much of a legal leg to stand on – at least in Germany TTBOMK, dunno about other jurisdictions; the standard IANAL disclaimer applies.

The rise of copyright trolls

Posted May 3, 2017 17:05 UTC (Wed) by aggelos (subscriber, #41752) [Link]

That is the problem for which some people (see the text I quoted and the immediately preceding text in the article) are suggesting a social contract as a partial solution. I'm not discussing whether this is an effective solution here; only the fact that a similar effort from almost a year ago was not mentioned, either in the discussion (as reported) or the article.

So I think you're making a different point to the one I was.

The rise of copyright trolls

Posted May 3, 2017 17:12 UTC (Wed) by jake (editor, #205) [Link] (17 responses)

> Was there any talk of what the participants felt is lacking from the principles of community-oriented GPL enforcement published by SFC and the
> FSF in response to the McHardy situation?

not during the portion of the discussion that i could report on ...

jake

Chatham House Rule

Posted May 3, 2017 19:07 UTC (Wed) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (16 responses)

The article says much was under the Chatham House Rule, but the rule deliberately doesn't forbid you from telling anyone what you learned, only that you can't tell people who said what.

So you can say e.g. "The participants seemed generally to believe that Martians exist" and we can make of that what we will about their soundness of mind, future intents and so on, but we can't attribute a statement of Martian existence to any individual.

You can't say "Ebenezer Scrooge asserted that it was immoral for programmers to seek any control over their work and furthermore that programmers were violating man's sacred relationship with mathematics by trying to use it to perform labour".

It may take a little extra work from journalists, but almost everything of any import should be able to be phrased in a way that gets across what you learned without saying who from, much as you would with a whistleblower source you want to protect. Your notes may of course include details that should not be reported, but it is not the practice of LWN (nor alas most news outlets) to publish notes, either at the time or retrospectively, so we have to rely upon editorial prudence as to the correctness of what is reported.

Chatham House Rule

Posted May 3, 2017 19:10 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (14 responses)

As you say, you have to rely on editorial prudence. Please assume that such prudence has been applied here in the best way Jake knew. Talk of "extra work" for somebody who has already crossed an ocean for the sole purpose of covering this event is a bit misplaced, in my opinion...

Chatham House Rule

Posted May 3, 2017 20:15 UTC (Wed) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

That's fine, the result is just disappointing. As I said the Chatham House Rule exists to _enable_ reporting of what was said, just not who said it. So it's a shame to have that rule in place, and to have people present to cover the event, and then it's not actually reported. But as with Private Eye I shan't be cancelling my subscription just because I don't happen to like one particular editorial decision.

Chatham House Rule

Posted May 4, 2017 7:36 UTC (Thu) by aggelos (subscriber, #41752) [Link] (12 responses)

Talk of "extra work" for somebody who has already crossed an ocean for the sole purpose of covering this event is a bit misplaced, in my opinion...

Was there really need for Jake to cross the ocean? Don't get me wrong, I can see why Intel, the LF and RH would fund this. But if the sole purpose of going there was to take down and reproduce what was said, is that so much preferable, for LWN subscribers, to LWN linking to the PR coverage these companies and their trade association would then pay someone else to produce[0]? For this subscriber, it wouldn't be preferable. And would also save Jake the inconvenience of two transatlantic flights.

[0] Or if they wouldn't bother if it weren't for LWN (doubtful), I'm sure the FSFE would have incentive enough to put out a summary of their own event.

Confused

Posted May 4, 2017 13:45 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (11 responses)

OK, so I must admit to being totally confused by that comment. Are you saying it's not worthwhile for LWN to attend conferences? If only we'd known, we could have saved all of that cattle-class time all these years...

Confused

Posted May 4, 2017 15:54 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (4 responses)

I think the point here from aggelos and myself is that we don't get anything out of LWN sending people to conferences per se.

We only get something out of the articles that result. Sending people to conferences may be necessary to make that possible, but it is not a goal in itself (or at least, it's not a goal _for your subscribers_).

As originally presented it seemed as though the situation is that Jake goes to a conference, he hears a whole bunch of interesting stuff, but the only bit he's going to report on (and thus the only value to LWN's subscribers) is this one panel session, and only the session itself not the accompanying Q&A or other material. I am not interested in stopping you or Jake doing that, but I did want to make clear above that I don't like it.

Now, subsequently there's another article from the same conference, so evidently there are at least two (maybe three? or more?) articles from the conference, and that changes the equation a bit. And obviously you will have known that (and will know if there's more to come) which we did not. So you have a different picture of the value proposition, and of course you may value background (e.g. now Jake knows how specific people feel about some of the issues, even though he won't be reporting that) because that's useful for making future editorial judgements, but we don't get any direct benefit from that either.

Confused

Posted May 4, 2017 17:43 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (2 responses)

> I am not interested in stopping you or Jake doing that, but I did want to make clear above that I don't like it.

You don't like it and you don't want to stop it? That's not consistent. Maybe you don't actually care that much?

It seems like you're trying to micromanage LWN here.... It's very odd.

Confused

Posted May 4, 2017 23:54 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (1 responses)

How is not wanting to stop something inconsistent with not liking it? I don't like Punk Rock, you won't find me queuing up to buy punk rock tickets. But you also won't find me demanding my local government officials stop spending money on Punk Rock, I recognise that my not liking something is just a personal opinion.

I think LWN will be better if, for any similar future events, it aims to report what was learned by attending a session under the Chatham House Rule, so that's the opinion I expressed - but I'm not about to throw my toys out of the pram if, as it seems is the case, the chief editor is of the opinion that it's a waste of his time and better to only hint that things were learned that won't be shared.

Confused

Posted May 5, 2017 7:11 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

It's inconsistent when accompanied with a strongly worded post... You used the omniscient we and went on for a bit. You do care, right?

Or do you often write about punk rock too?

Personally, given their record, I'm happy to give LWN editors the benefit of the doubt. For more info, maybe you could contact the FSFE? It also seems likely that someone from the FSF or SFC was in attendance.

Confused

Posted May 4, 2017 17:54 UTC (Thu) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link]

You don't speak for everyone here, you should understand that you only speak for yourself. You've phrased this as if the member community is in agreement with you and frankly I don't agree with what you said.

Confused

Posted May 4, 2017 21:43 UTC (Thu) by aggelos (subscriber, #41752) [Link]

If the coverage presented neglects to discuss speaker affiliations and relevant information (especially pertinent information that is conspicuously absent from a discussion), but limits itself to summarizing the contents of a presentation or discussion, then its value to subscribers is significantly diminished, yes. Even more so when a panel is, shall we say.. unbalanced? Needless to say, I do expect LWN editors to mention elephants (or smaller animals) in the room, even if the speakers do not discuss them.

In fact, what is maximized by this style of coverage is LWN's value to travel sponsors who want to make sure a message or narrative reaches an audience (developers) that their PR departments don't have easy access to. Note, I'm not saying that LWN editors are conciously choosing to produce this kind of coverage to maximize their their chances of getting travel assistance. Rather, that there is a potential synergy that needs to be acknowledged as any conflict of interest would be.

On that note, it would be useful to go on record as to who was the initiator when LWN receives travel assistance for attending an event. Did the editors request it or was it offered?

Disclosing a funding relationship does not cure it, of course. I hope LWN could get to the point where subscription revenue is high enough that travel costs would not be an issue, but accept that this might never be the case. Even putting aside potential issues with the sponsoring though, this style of coverage is still way too cavalier about amplifying what might be a biased version of a particular story (e.g. see footnote 0 in this comment).

FWIW, I do appreciate the summaries of (necessarily) selected conference presentations, as otherwise, even if the videos were available, some of us wouldn't have the time or motivation to take a look at each talk (or panel, as the case may be). Video or audio recordings are really bad for skimming. For events that are not recorded (and there's no reason why they should be), having an LWN editor summarize them is the next best thing to being there.

That said, I would gladly trade off most conference coverage for more in-depth technical articles and comprehensive, responsible (i.e. pointing out of factual errors and gross misrepresentations) summarization of ongoing discussions in mailing lists and other forums of the communities LWN usually concerns itself with. If it saves our editors any time in cattle-class seats, that would be a great bonus.

Confused

Posted May 9, 2017 8:04 UTC (Tue) by aggelos (subscriber, #41752) [Link] (4 responses)

On that note, it would be useful to go on record as to who was the initiator when LWN receives travel assistance for attending an event. Did the editors request it or was it offered?

Can I bring this up again?

In the interest of increased transparency, can our editors (in the future) extend their disclosure parties who provided travel assistance with the information on whether they were offered the funds or asked for them of their own accord?

Also, could we have a ballpark estimation for the percentage of events LWN was invited, as well as sponsored, to attend in the last few years? If there are events that LWN was invited to cover, are there any obvious commonalities in those requests (e.g. a specific travel sponsor or event)?

Thanks.

Confused

Posted May 9, 2017 8:19 UTC (Tue) by gevaerts (subscriber, #21521) [Link]

"I disagree with this article, so let's try to discredit its author's motives"

Confused

Posted May 9, 2017 13:16 UTC (Tue) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (2 responses)

We don't track who mentions travel funding first, sorry.

On the other hand, we do publish nearly 20 years of history which, I believe, shows a consistent and clear picture of where LWN is coming from. That was achieved at some considerable personal cost, including far too much time spent on airplanes and away from home. Yet you're saying that we can be somehow bought by offering us yet another economy-class transoceanic experience. I could get fairly offended if I weren't so busy giggling at the prospect.

Confused

Posted May 9, 2017 14:42 UTC (Tue) by aggelos (subscriber, #41752) [Link] (1 responses)

For people who think you might be 'bought', you're already putting up the information on who provides travel assistance for LWN editors. So (obviously, I might add) that was not my concern or implication.

My concern is that the style of reporting practiced and defended by articles such as this (i.e. only summarizing what was said, refusing to check facts as common practice (e.g. first footnote here and subsequent reply), choosing not to point out items which are clearly left off the agenda) is a disservice to LWN as a subscriber-oriented site.

Given that LWN (apparently; I honestly apologize if I have gotten the wrong impression from the comments by the staff) will dutifully reproduce the presentations and discussions at an event for its (primarily developer) audience, it makes sense to want to know which organizations want to promote which events to this audience.

If you do not want to provide such information that is your prerogative (though it'd be helpful if we knew why). In my eyes, the situation is analogous to the transparency you currently practice re: travel sponsoring. Admittedly, "LWN attended this event on the invitation and sponsoring of Org X" might not sound great (though if it doesn't sound good to your ears, you might stop and consider why). But, as you say, 20 years of history assures us of the good faith efforts of the LWN editors.

What is also assured though, is that bias in reporting is not only a matter of personal integrity. If I may quote another comment out of context:

People are prone to bias. Even the best of people. They may not even be aware of it themselves. The way these biases work is that professionals can convince themselves they are doing the right thing as part of it. You need to openly acknowledge interests that might bias things (as is best practice in the medical world, e.g.) to have a hope of countering it. And generally be systematic about counter-balancing self-interest-bias - cause humans _are_ very prone to it.

With that in mind, I hope that you (or any other editor at LWN) no longer feel you have a reason to be offended. And perhaps that you'll reconsider the suggestion re: increased transparency.

Confused

Posted May 9, 2017 15:15 UTC (Tue) by aggelos (subscriber, #41752) [Link]

Oh, I should add that I also hope you'll reconsider the aforementioned aspects of your reporting practices. If anything, that seems (to me) even more valuable to the subscriber base.

Chatham House Rule

Posted May 3, 2017 19:18 UTC (Wed) by jake (editor, #205) [Link]

> only that you can't tell people who said what.

it's a little more complicated than that. you also cannot reveal anyone's affiliation(s).

> Your notes may of course include details that should not be reported,

fwiw, I chose not to take notes in parts under CHR -- the risk of inadvertently revealing identities/organizations seemed too high ...

jake

The rise of copyright trolls

Posted May 3, 2017 18:23 UTC (Wed) by ocrete (subscriber, #107180) [Link]

The main problem with the SFC style enforcement described in their Principles document is that it's not sustainable, it costs more than it brings. To be able to have widespread compliance, we need to have large scale enforcement, and to make that happen, it needs to be financially self-sustaining. McHardy's tactics may not be all that amazing, but there is clearly a place for a self-funding ethical enforcer, it will still make some of the corporate backers of the Linux Foundation very unhappy, but it will make many others very happy.

The rise of copyright trolls

Posted May 3, 2017 19:50 UTC (Wed) by jonas (guest, #91024) [Link] (7 responses)

Those principles certainly have the right idea: compliance before litigation. That doesn't seem to be what the article talks about though: if McHardy followed the SFC/FSF principles, the concern about his specific cases would be less. But the problem isn't limited to McHardy. It's a general and potentially rising problem with people or organisations who may be tempted to use their copyright holding in free software for monetary gain.

The answer to this isn't to litigate more; it's to make compliance super-ultra-miraculously easy, help everyone be in compliance, and make sure people know how, and can show clearly they are in compliance if being faced by a copyright troll. There's a lot of work we still need to do on this, and the panel highlighted this and the risks if we don't.

The rise of copyright trolls

Posted May 5, 2017 8:47 UTC (Fri) by aggelos (subscriber, #41752) [Link] (6 responses)

Those principles certainly have the right idea: compliance before litigation. That doesn't seem to be what the article talks about though: if McHardy followed the SFC/FSF principles, the concern about his specific cases would be less. But the problem isn't limited to McHardy. It's a general and potentially rising problem with people or organisations who may be tempted to use their copyright holding in free software for monetary gain.

The panel (as summarized here) discussed both efforts to help compliance (e.g. by promoting the book published by the Linux Foundation and written by two of the presenters) and efforts to set community norms (the 'social contract'). The point in this subthread was about the second part (I have not had time to go through the book. I'd find a comparative reading of it and copyleft.org's A Practical Guide to GPL Compliance pretty informative, though I doubt LWN would be interested in publishing such an article).

The answer to this isn't to litigate more; it's to make compliance super-ultra-miraculously easy, help everyone be in compliance, and make sure people know how, and can show clearly they are in compliance if being faced by a copyright troll. There's a lot of work we still need to do on this, and the panel highlighted this and the risks if we don't.

I agree with that more than you seem to realize. The two points I'm making are that (a) the interpretation of the (unavailable) data as to the frivolity and seriousness of this kind of legal activity by McHardy appears to be coming from people who stand to benefit from increased worry around GPL non-compliance for trivial issues[0] and (b) the 'social contract' they advocate comes to contend with another, earlier, social contract that has been brought forward as a response to the exact same situation, and that fact is not acknowledged in the presentation or LWN's coverage.

FWIW, I also think that making compliance as streamlined and fool-proof as possible is the better way forward here (without discounting the importance of dealing with the current situation). It would be great to be able to talk specifics here, but case information is regrettably not available. It is encouraging to read that "over time, McHardy has moved away from the more exotic claims". I would be very interested in finding out why that is.

Is the LF or any other organization making or funding an effort to streamline the license compliance process?

[0] This is not to say that their facts are false; just that others might interpret the facts differently. For all we know Armijn et al are underestimating the damages, though their accompanying argumentation is clearly (to this reader at least) pointing in the other direction. Perhaps one day we'll be able to judge for ourselves.

Streamlining the compliance process

Posted May 5, 2017 17:18 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (5 responses)

Is the LF or any other organization making or funding an effort to streamline the license compliance process?

The LF is doing quite a bit in this area. OpenChain is there to help companies set up their compliance programs. SPDX is a long-running effort to make it easy to document the provenance of the software in any given distribution. There's a whole list of publications, including the book by Armijn and Shane mentioned elsewhere in this conversation. They also offer an online course in "compliance basics" for free.

My own wish is that the LF would do more to address the outright compliance problems in the industry, and I've told them so. If there's anything happening there it's below the radar, but they are doing quite a bit to make things easier for the companies that want to follow the rules.

Streamlining the compliance process

Posted May 6, 2017 13:25 UTC (Sat) by aggelos (subscriber, #41752) [Link] (4 responses)

LF is doing quite a bit in this area. OpenChain is there to help companies set up their compliance programs. SPDX is a long-running effort to make it easy to document the provenance of the software in any given distribution. There's a whole list of publications, including the book by Armijn and Shane mentioned elsewhere in this conversation. They also offer an online course in "compliance basics" for free.

It's clear the LF is publishing a lot of documents on how to do compliance as a company - I skimmed the book by Armijn et al. and the thing that stood out, other than the erasure of GPLv3 (people don't ship samba in embedded devices?), is the number of LF documents mentioned in Appendix 1. Only LF documents, come to think of it. Almost as if there are no other publications on the subject.

Documenting an arduous process is well and good and will remain necessary. It is however not the same thing as making said process easier (for instance, by pursuing tooling improvements). My question was about the latter aspect.

My own wish is that the LF would do more to address the outright compliance problems in the industry, and I've told them so. If there's anything happening there it's below the radar, but they are doing quite a bit to make things easier for the companies that want to follow the rules.

It is good to hear about preventive work. What more do you think they could be doing to address the ongoing compliance problems?

Streamlining the compliance process

Posted May 6, 2017 14:06 UTC (Sat) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (1 responses)

> (people don't ship samba in embedded devices?)

They definitely do; I have a router that I only found out runs Linux (and is not GPL compliant) because of a mention of Samba in the web interface.

Streamlining the compliance process

Posted May 6, 2017 20:34 UTC (Sat) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link]

Just wanted to point out that Samba does not imply a Linux OS. Samba also runs on BSD, OS X, and could have been ported to almost any POSIX supporting OS. Haiku and QNX for example.

Streamlining the compliance process

Posted May 7, 2017 17:05 UTC (Sun) by jra (subscriber, #55261) [Link] (1 responses)

> people don't ship samba in embedded devices?

Oh that's just wrong. We have *many* OEMs who ship Samba in embedded devices. Google even ships Samba code (as an app) in ChromeOS.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/network-file-sh...

Streamlining the compliance process

Posted May 7, 2017 18:09 UTC (Sun) by aggelos (subscriber, #41752) [Link]

people don't ship samba in embedded devices?
Oh that's just wrong.

Notice the question mark. I was simply pointing out how odd it is that a book called "Practical GPL Compliance" which

is designed for engineers shipping products with GPL-licensed software included (e.g., consumer electronics, drones, IoT devices)

acts as if GPLv3 does not exist (other than a nod) or is not relevant to their target audience.

Personally, I'm also missing the tiniest bit of explanation for copyleft as a concept or motivation to comply with it. I.e. something to the effect of "the GPL is not just a nuisance, it is also beneficial to your organization because [...]". This is something I expect to find in texts which describe to engineers how to take care of a non-engineering task that is probably low in their priority list. Opinions (and intentions) might differ, of course.

The rise of copyright trolls

Posted May 5, 2017 13:16 UTC (Fri) by rfontana (subscriber, #52677) [Link] (2 responses)

I was at this session. I did not take notes and of course I may be misremembering, but my recollection is that the Principles were mentioned explicitly only by one attendee at this session, and there was certainly no substantive discussion of the Principles. Regarding views on what is lacking in the Principles, that was in part the subject of my talk at FOSDEM earlier this year, covered by LWN.net at https://lwn.net/Articles/715082/.

The rise of copyright trolls

Posted May 6, 2017 13:26 UTC (Sat) by aggelos (subscriber, #41752) [Link]

Thank you for clarifying this. I do very much wonder where this new social contract will be drafted.

With regard to your FOSDEM presentation, it's not clear to me from the summary (though now that it's been brought to my attention again, I intend to watch the recording) whether these are your own ideas or those of RH and therefore assumed the former.

I sincerely hope an open discussion can eventually take place, though judging from what was reported from this LLW panel, that does not seem to be forthcoming.

principles-discuss

Posted May 6, 2017 21:38 UTC (Sat) by rfontana (subscriber, #52677) [Link]

By the way, Conservancy has created a forum (https://lists.sfconservancy.org/mailman/listinfo/principl...) for discussion about the Principles. bkuhn has pointed out that to the extent I or other people or entities have suggestions for improvements to the Principles, that is the best place for voicing them.