[Fsf-friends] Is this true?
Mahesh T Pai
paivakil@vsnl.net
Thu, 14 Nov 2002 15:24:03 +0530
Frederick Noronha wrote:
> Any government with the political will can use
> compulsory licensing to permit third parties to copy and distribute
Not quite. Compulsory licensing is available *only* if the owner of
the right (patent, copyright) refuses to release the material in the
concerned jurisdiction.
Relevant provisions for MS Windows, (coz it is a 'foreign work'' wrt
India) are in Sec. 32A of Copyright Act.
Extracts from S. 32A:-
"(a) The copies of such edition are not made available in India; or
(b) Such copies have not been put on sale in India for a period of six
months, (bla... bla ... )"
This *cannot* apply to unpublished works, only if the work was
published once, (in India) and subsequently, there is a refusal to
republish; or, if the work is of foreign origin, published in the
foreign country, and the owner refuses to publish it in India, can
this provision be applied; that too, after giving them sufficient
notice.
So, do not dream of prising open the can of worms, oops, the cache of
source code coz it was not published any where.
:(
Mahesh T Pai.