[Fedora-legal-list] copyright and license notices in media files

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On 02/18/2010 09:16 AM, Ben Asselstine wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm finding that media file are not attributed to the same degree that
> source code files are.  License and copyright notices are often stated
> at the file-level for source code files... probably because these
> files have a way of migrating to other software packages.  Media files
> have a way of migrating around too, yet license and copyright
> attribution is hardly ever included within the file.  Sometimes it's
> even impossible to store that kind of information in a media file.
> Music files seem to have better attribution than video or images.
> 
> It can be difficult to determine who has copyright on an image file
> found in a Fedora package.  The problem gets worse if a few years pass
> and memories fade, and VCS-es migrate.  In my opinion these copyright
> holes introduce licensing uncertainty, and it serves our Free Software
> ecosystem well to attribute files with license and copyright notices.
> 
> It can probably be considered as mostly an upstream problem, but there
> is also the special case of when a Fedora maintainer adds a media file
> to a package.  Should there be (or is there already) a policy or
> guideline about per-file license and copyright notices?  How about a
> policy just for Fedora maintainers for any media files they
> incorporate into a package?

We do have some existant policy here:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/LicensingGuidelines#License_Clarification

License Clarification

In cases where the licensing is unclear, it may be necessary to contact
the copyright holders to confirm the licensing of code or content. In
those situations, it is _always_ preferred to ask upstream to resolve
the licensing confusion by documenting the licensing and releasing an
updated tarball. However, this is not always possible to achieve. In
such cases, it is acceptable to receive confirmation of licensing via
email. A copy of the email, containing full headers, must be included as
a source file (marked as %doc) in the package. This file is considered
part of the license text.

*****

Do you think that is sufficient, or should we have more explicit policy
to cover documenting licensing on content?

~spot