[Coco] $0.25 per what ?

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Fri, 2005-07-08 at 15:09 -0500, Mannequin* wrote:
> On Fri, 8 Jul 2005 14:55:44 -0500
> "Boisy G. Pitre" <boisy at boisypitre.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> > My prediction is that within 3 months of the release of the project,  
> > there will be wholesale copying of these DVDs and Lonnie will be  
> > deprived of a great deal of revenue.
> > 
> > Boisy
> 
> Lonnie isn't in it for the bucks. He's letting this go for less that what his
> lawyer suggested. All he's doing by keeping a price on it, is keeping up the
> copyrights. If he were to let this go for nothing, then, from what I understand,
> that would legally be letting the copyrights go and turning it over to public
> domain.
> 

That's not correct. Otherwise, for example, the GPL and BSD licenses
wouldn't work. You can give copies of copyrighted works away, or grant
others a license to make copies regardless of price.

However, I do take at face value Lonnie's claim that he needs to charge
a nominal fee. But from what I've gathered the legal reason has to do
with *contracts* between him and the advertisers and/or authors. These
are contractual obligations, nothing directly to do with copyright.

> IMHO, I think he should keep his copyrights protected. Lonnie and his staff
> worked hard for years for all of this. If he doesn't want to let the copyrights
> go, then he shouldn't have to.
> 

No, he doesn't have to, and based on his statements, contractually, he
cannot without breaching contract. And if he breaches contract, that
opens him up to liability.

-- John.