Legal

From Freedom Buyer

This page can be used to point out and discuss legal issues for this project.

[edit] Legal issues

• In order to successfully liberate a work, a legally binding contract needs to be made between the campaign organisers (or the members of this project in general) and the copyright holder of the work, to ensure that they release the legal and practical restrictions on the work once they've received their fee. This may require meeting them (or a representative) in person, but hopefully it doesn't. We may be able to get some legal help from one or more organisations, such as The Software Freedom Law Center, The Electronic Frontier Foundation, The Open Rights Group or Creative Commons.

• A creative work is more complicated to liberate if it's a derivative of another work, for example a film which is based on a book. It might be completely impossible to liberate it without liberating the original work as well.

• If possible, the new legal terms for a liberated work should apply to all copies which people already have, not just those which are received once it's been liberated. This may or may not be possible.

If anyone knows more about any of these issues, please tell us, or add it to this page.