I’ve found the intersection of copyright law and technological change particularly interesting. For the past several years, one of the sites that I check at least daily is Groklaw. The site has been very educational about such junctions in its description and of current situations and cases and its ability to gather and create resources related to those, notably those related to the ownership of Unix and Linux.
The Groklaw community primarily examines legal issues affecting users and developers of technology. The site first became popular when looking at the SCO Group’s cases against Linux users and developers, represented most notably in their suits against IBM and Novell. The SCO Group publicly claimed ownership of Unix, called Linux a derivative work of Unix, and stated that they were therefore owed money by Linux users. That’s a simple summary of how the story begins, but the related cases have gone through numerous and significant changes since their beginning, with an end possibly in sight. Beyond those cases, Groklaw has also examined patent law, peer-to-peer lawsuits, DRM, contract law, open standards, open documents, and several other issues of concern.
The site is fascinating for a number of reasons. It provides a valuable look at important cases involving copyright and software as they are proceeding. The commentary is informative and useful in helping to understand civil procedure and other complex aspects of the legal system. The Groklaw community also provides court documents that they retrieve or scan themselves and multiple versions of those documents, including text.
The cases are complex, with twists and turns involving changing of ownership, contracts, and how copyright law has been interpreted when dealing with code. In August, Novell won several key points of the case, and the court stated that Novell retained ownership of Unix and UnixWare copyrights. Groklaw now has a new subject to watch: bankruptcy, which SCO filed the day before a trial was supposed to begin to determine the amount of money owed to Novell.
