Using GPL code in movie scenes

[Jerome Leclanche]

Hi list

What are the implications of GPL-licensed code being used in a purely
cosmetic way in commercial products (such as hollywoodish hacking scenes)?

Someone pointed out a scene from the american TV show Burn Notice[1] that
includes code which can be traced back to a personal website [2] which
explicitely releases the code as GPL.

Note that the author might have been contacted by the studio and given
explicit permission. I'm curious what the show's obligations are in such a
case.

Thanks!

[1] Loading Image...
[2] http://www.peculiarities.com/code/mac.html

JL

[Neil Brown]

What are the implications of GPL-licensed code being used in a purely cosmetic way in commercial products (such as hollywoodish hacking scenes)?

None at all, that I can think of — the GPL does not impose any conditions on merely running a program, and, in my view, the spirit of the GPL would extend this to running it and filming it being run. There is not act of distribution or conveyance here.

It might be quite good publicity, though?


Neil

__________

Neil Brown
***@neilzone.co.uk | http://neilzone.co.uk

[Arnt Karlsen]

On Sat, 10 Aug 2013 09:18:30 +0100, Neil wrote in message

Post by Jerome Leclanche
What are the implications of GPL-licensed code being used in a
purely cosmetic way in commercial products (such as hollywoodish
hacking scenes)?

None at all, that I can think of — the GPL does not impose any
conditions on merely running a program, and, in my view, the spirit
of the GPL would extend this to running it and filming it being run.
There is not act of distribution or conveyance here.

..compare the right hand side third of http://i.imgur.com/gw9a0Cg.jpg
with http://www.peculiarities.com/code/mac.html before you jump to
such conclusions, showing code snippets to people in a public movie
theater, _is_ indeed "an act of publishing it." ;o)

..now, there's also the fair use clause, is this a parody etc, and
is this wee flash of code any bit useful to the paying public? ;o)

It might be quite good publicity, though?

..depends on whether it's a good movie, good context in a bad movie,
pettyness in hawking copyright enforcement, e.g. Darl McBride didn't
enjoy http://groklaw.net/ coverage much, but it also gave rise to
airshow like enjoyment of litigation tactics that could make great
movies. :o)

Neil
__________
Neil Brown

[TJ]

What are the implications of GPL-licensed code being used in a purely cosmetic way in commercial products (such as hollywoodish hacking scenes)?

None at all, that I can think of — the GPL does not impose any conditions on merely running a program, and, in my view, the spirit of the GPL would extend this to running it and filming it
being run. There is not act of distribution or conveyance here.

..compare the right hand side third of http://i.imgur.com/gw9a0Cg.jpg with http://www.peculiarities.com/code/mac.html before you jump to such conclusions, showing code snippets to people in a
public movie theater, _is_ indeed "an act of publishing it." ;o)

By that logic it would mean that if I were to catch a brief glimpse of your laptop screen - or projection presentation - as it displayed a fragment of GPLed source-code that it would be an act of
publishing under §2b ?

[Arnt Karlsen]

On Sat, 10 Aug 2013 14:28:43 +0100, TJ wrote in message

Post by TJ

Post by Arnt Karlsen
On Sat, 10 Aug 2013 09:18:30 +0100, Neil wrote in message

Post by Jerome Leclanche
What are the implications of GPL-licensed code being used in a
purely cosmetic way in commercial products (such as hollywoodish
hacking scenes)?

None at all, that I can think of — the GPL does not impose any
conditions on merely running a program, and, in my view, the
spirit of the GPL would extend this to running it and filming it
being run. There is not act of distribution or conveyance here.

..compare the right hand side third of
http://i.imgur.com/gw9a0Cg.jpg with
http://www.peculiarities.com/code/mac.html before you jump to such
conclusions, showing code snippets to people in a public movie
theater, _is_ indeed "an act of publishing it." ;o)

By that logic it would mean that if I were to catch a brief glimpse
of your laptop screen - or projection presentation - as it displayed
a fragment of GPLed source-code that it would be an act of publishing
under §2b ?

..only if I let you watch. If I don't, and you sneak or zoom in
etc to see it, your action approaches espionage and theft and is
unlicensed and may in some jurisdictions warrant chopping off
your head to prevent any further unlicensed publishing. ;o)

[Bruce Perens]

Feature films always have copyrighted and trademarked material that is
_incidentally_ present. You could hardly film on location (as opposed to
in the studio) without encountering it, nor could you film people
wearing clothes!

But we are saved from having to rub all of those things out of the image
because their inclusion falls under the fair use exclusion in copyright law.

Thanks

Bruce

[Bruce Perens]

Yes, but most nations that don't have fair use doctrine recognize a de
minimus exception in art. The EU Copyright Directive explicitly allows
member nations to implement this.

Most jurisdictions do not have a fair use limitation to copyright.
Hendrik

[Philip Kendall]

Post by Bruce Perens
Yes, but most nations that don't have fair use doctrine recognize a de
minimus exception in art. The EU Copyright Directive explicitly allows
member nations to implement this.

Say for instance, Section 31 of the CDPA 1988 in the UK
<http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/31>:

"(1) Copyright in a work is not infringed by its incidental inclusion in
an artistic work, sound recording, film or broadcast"

There's obviously a line somewhere as to what counts as "incidental"
inclusion, but the general principle applies.

Cheers,

Phil

[Wilson, Andrew]

Note the Mozilla license includes rights to "perform" and "display," so this would
be a moot point if the movie's hacker were shown using Firefox.

cheers

Andy Wilson
Intel open source technology license

[Smith, McCoy]

If you really want to see a movie displaying free software in command line form, "Anti-Trust" is the one to see. They show some GNOME and GNU/Linux on screen: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv
Not a particularly good movie (unless you're a fan of unintentional hilarity or rather obvious cinema de clef), but it does feature an evil closed source software mega-billionaire located in the Pacific Northwest of the USA who is eventually toppled by free software hackers.

-----Original Message-----
From: legal-***@lists.gpl-violations.org [mailto:legal-***@lists.gpl-violations.org] On Behalf Of Wilson, Andrew
Sent: Friday, August 16, 2013 10:15 AM
To: ***@lists.gpl-violations.org
Subject: RE: Using GPL code in movie scenes

Note the Mozilla license includes rights to "perform" and "display," so this would be a moot point if the movie's hacker were shown using Firefox.

cheers

Andy Wilson
Intel open source technology license

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

[Anti-Trust] does feature an evil closed source software mega-billionaire
located in the Pacific Northwest of the USA who is eventually toppled
by free software hackers.

Ironically, Miguel De Icaza has a cameo in that movie, and now he writes
a lot of proprietary software. Go figure.

[Arnt Karlsen]

On Fri, 16 Aug 2013 17:15:20 +0000, Andrew wrote in message

Post by Wilson, Andrew
Note the Mozilla license includes rights to "perform" and "display,"
so this would be a moot point if the movie's hacker were shown using
Firefox.

..which of course leaves "what works are Firefox displaying?"... ;o)

Post by Wilson, Andrew
cheers
Andy Wilson
Intel open source technology license

[Hendrik Weimer]

Post by Bruce Perens
Yes, but most nations that don't have fair use doctrine recognize a de
minimus exception in art.

At least in Germany this exception is limited to unintentional
inclusion. For instance, distributing a photograph of a showroom
containing a copyrighted painting constitutes infringement.

Hendrik

[Bruce Perens]

There are definitely abuses that would not fall under a de minimus exception, however these in general are deliberate attempts to circumvent copyright by showing image that you would otherwise not be allowed to by manipulating its context.

I've been part of the production of several feature films at Pixar, and also wrote software for Disney's Cineon system which was used to remove elements of the image in a live-action film, to restore an old film, or to remove the cable from the image when an actor flies or falls on screen.

We had a number of reasons to change a film image when translating it to other languages, for markets including Germany. Copyright law was never one of them, though trademark law certainly was.

Pixar and Disney would not have used a copyrighted or trademarked element as a major element of the film without permission, and we did get photo releases from anyone in a speaking role. Mattel, to their enduring chagrin, refused us permission to use Barbie as a character in the original Toy Story.

But as incidental elements? No problem. So, your page of code is going to be treated the same way as a news paper or a magazine cover on the streets of New York in some movie background. It's just there for versimilitude, and does not create a derivative work.

Thanks

Bruce

Post by Hendrik Weimer

Post by Bruce Perens
Yes, but most nations that don't have fair use doctrine recognize a

de

Post by Bruce Perens
minimus exception in art.

At least in Germany this exception is limited to unintentional
inclusion. For instance, distributing a photograph of a showroom
containing a copyrighted painting constitutes infringement.
Hendrik

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

Post by Bruce Perens
Yes, but most nations that don't have fair use doctrine recognize a de
minimus exception in art. The EU Copyright Directive explicitly allows
member nations to implement this.

BTW, IIUC, fair use in the USA is a defense against claims of
copyright infringement, not an affirmative right.


The main issue about putting GPL'd software in a movie, at least in the
USA, is the fact that public performance of software is more or less
"undefined" under USA copyright law:
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#117

When designing the Affero GPL, we looked into using a public performance
copyright control to make Affero GPL work, but there wasn't any obvious
way to do that.

Nevertheless, I've long supported the idea that copyleft licenses should
say: "Should the public performance of a Work require permission under
copyright law, then anyone who receives such a public performance shall
be given an opportunity to receive Corresponding Source". (At least
Affero GPL should say this, IMO. :)

But, barring a public performance copyright control, people viewing a
movie that films running copylefted software isn't receiving distribution,
so they have no right to Corresponding Source. As someone else mentioned,
merely running the program is also affirmatively unrestricted in GPL.

I imagine that one could make a legitimate argument that distributing a
filmed copy of some source code (or a binary) is conveying and/or
distributing a non-source form of the Work, and thus GPLv2§3 and GPLv3§6
kick in, but I think we have a lot more meaningful GPL violations to
chase other than these. :)

[Arnt Karlsen]

On Sat, 17 Aug 2013 22:10:46 -0400, Bradley wrote in message

Post by Bradley M. Kuhn
But, barring a public performance copyright control, people viewing a
movie that films running copylefted software isn't receiving
distribution, so they have no right to Corresponding Source.

..what happens when the source code is shown on the film screen,
clearly performance, but also distribution? It is published, no?

..in the latter case, the source code requirement must be satisfied,
as it is shown on the screen.

Post by Bradley M. Kuhn
As someone else mentioned, merely running the program is also
affirmatively unrestricted in GPL.

..and if it's shown running or at all, it's out of the question
or case etc too.

Post by Bradley M. Kuhn
I imagine that one could make a legitimate argument that distributing
a filmed copy of some source code (or a binary) is conveying and/or
distributing a non-source form of the Work, and thus GPLv2§3 and
GPLv3§6 kick in, but I think we have a lot more meaningful GPL
violations to chase other than these. :)

..aye, and drawing the meaningless lines here exactly where
we want them drawn, means we don't have to fight them drawn
elsewhere in the courts. Yes, I too find that silly. ;o)

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

Post by Arnt Karlsen
..what happens when the source code is shown on the film screen,
clearly performance, but also distribution? It is published, no?

I discussed the issue of binary distribution this way in my previous
email.

If *source code* (not binary) is what's shown on the screen, that's
likely covered by GPLv2§1, in which case the primary violation is one of
failure to show the copyright notices and a copy of the GPL. But,
again, are we really going to chase that when there's so much other work
to do?

[Arnt Karlsen]

On Mon, 19 Aug 2013 09:32:09 -0400, Bradley wrote in message

But, again, are we really going to chase that when there's so much
other work to do?

..IMO the "sillier" points are best nailed down here or on
a FAQ page, so we can focus on what we really need to do.

[Bruce Perens]

Post by Arnt Karlsen
..what happens when the source code is shown on the film screen,
clearly performance, but also distribution? It is published, no? ..in
the latter case, the source code requirement must be satisfied, as it
is shown on the screen.

To do so, you'd have to establish that the form of the expressive
elements (not the strictly functional ones, which are not in general
copyrightable) within the source code were actually important to the
artistic work, rather than the appearance of the source code being a
stand-in for a generic idea of source code and thus de minimus or fair use.

It seems very unlikely.

[Hendrik Weimer]

Post by Bruce Perens
But we are saved from having to rub all of those things out of the
image because their inclusion falls under the fair use exclusion in
copyright law.

Most jurisdictions do not have a fair use limitation to copyright.

Hendrik