Re: [bitcoin-dev] Open Block Chain Licence, BIP[xxxx] Draft

From: "Warren Togami Jr." <wtogami@gmail•com>
To: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Open Block Chain Licence, BIP[xxxx] Draft
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2015 01:56:30 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAEz79Po2S0VS0xEvzciLq4w7bLMuLF3Kyr0H5h+jWeYZW1QSpQ@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CADr=VrRT2tdN0jjkZ7HjjeyqonrHG=j+uh8m1L2nhew7c1gnng@mail.gmail.com>

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I am skeptical that any license for the blockchain itself is needed because
of the possibility that the blockchain is not entitled to copyright
protection.  While I am not a lawyer, I have stared hard at the copyright
doctrine of the U.S. in multiple law school Intellectual Property courses
and during my previous career in Open Source Software where copyright
matters a great deal.

As each owner of a
> coin makes a transfer by digitally signing a hash of the previous
> transaction along with the
> new owner’s public key, the block chain is a perpetual compilation of
> unique data.
> *It is therefore compiled in a creative and non-obvious way.* In the USA,
> for example, these
> attributes confer legal protections for databases which have been ruled
> upon by the courts.

This portion of your paper I believe is not true and requires citations if
you want to be convincing.  Is it truly "creative and non-obvious"?  My
understanding under at least U.S. law, the blockchain may not be entitled
to copyright protection because a compilation created in a mechanical
manner is not a creative work of a human.

I suppose a transaction could contain a "creative" element if it contains
arbitrary bytes of a message or clever script.  For the most part though
most of what you call "digitally signing a hash of the previous transaction
along with the new owner’s public key" is purely the result of a mechanical
process and really is not creative.  Furthermore, even if that output were
"non-obvious", obviousness has nothing to do with copyrightability.

Your license is correct in intent in attempting to exclude from the royalty
free grant works within the blockchain that themselves may be subject to
copyright of third parties.  The elements within the blockchain may be
entitled individually to copyright if they are in any way a creative work
of a human, but as a compilation I am doubtful the blockchain itself is
entitled to copyright.

I understand copyright with respect to databases can be different under
other jurisdictions.  Your paper mentions the European database law that is
indeed different from the U.S.  Your paper is incomplete in scholarly and
legal citations.  I myself and we as a community don't know enough.  I
suppose this topic merits further study.

Warren Togami

On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 6:30 AM, Ahmed Zsales via bitcoin-dev <
bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> We believe the network requires a block chain licence to supplement the
> existing MIT Licence which we believe only covers the core reference client
> software.
>
> Replacing or amending the existing MIT Licence is beyond the scope of this
> draft BIP.
>
> Rationale and details of our draft BIP for discussion and evaluation are
> here:
>
>
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwEbhrQ4ELzBMVFxajNZa2hzMTg/view?usp=sharing
>
> Regards,
>
> Ahmed
>
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>
>

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