Re: <nettime> floss enforcement/compliance

[Benjamin Geer <ben@socialtools.net>]

Martin Hardie wrote:
> I understand from the FSF in the US that they deal with enforcement and 
> compliance of the GPL.

That sounds a bit misleading.  The FSF defends the copyrights that it 
owns (i.e. for software that is part of the GNU project), and also 
sometimes helps out other copyright owners of free software when asked 
to do so.

> But do they (and I presume with the support of Prof 
> Moglen) only do it within the US. That is within their jurisdiction?

The jurisdiction for copyrights is international, thanks to the Berne 
Convention.  The FSF has provided legal assistance to free software 
authors outside the U.S.; the Swedish company MySQL AB is an example:

http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/f_headline.cgi?bw.111202/223162550

> Do other groups (ie other than the FSF) deal with compliance and enforcement 
> issues?

I think it's mostly up to each copyright owner.

Ben

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