WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:08.000 Thank you for the introduction, Bradley. 00:08.000 --> 00:11.000 Just to give a bit more elaboration. 00:11.000 --> 00:12.000 My name is Gabriel. 00:12.000 --> 00:15.000 I am a legal program manager with the Free Software Foundation 00:15.000 --> 00:17.000 in Berlin and Germany. 00:17.000 --> 00:19.000 And that means that I'm a former lawyer. 00:19.000 --> 00:24.000 And I currently manage the legal projects at the FSFee. 00:24.000 --> 00:28.000 This includes a EU-funded project called Next Generation Internet 00:28.000 --> 00:34.000 where we provide funding and technological support 00:34.000 --> 00:37.000 to Free Software projects around Europe. 00:37.000 --> 00:43.000 That kind of provide alternatives to existing proprietary 00:43.000 --> 00:48.000 Internet infrastructure or proprietary Internet applications that are widely used. 00:48.000 --> 00:54.000 And this is important because it's important to provide Free Software 00:54.000 --> 00:59.000 for all alternatives to these proprietary products that basically control 00:59.000 --> 01:03.000 our Internet and our digital connectivity. 01:03.000 --> 01:08.000 And I also write articles about the FSFee's legal corner. 01:08.000 --> 01:19.000 So if you're interested, this is not working as well. 01:19.000 --> 01:24.000 Yeah, so if you're interested, you can check us out at FSFee.org. 01:24.000 --> 01:26.000 Yeah. 01:26.000 --> 01:32.000 So as Bradley mentioned, I've been tasked today with providing kind of a introduction 01:32.000 --> 01:38.000 to the law and to Free Software and how the law interacts with Free Software. 01:38.000 --> 01:43.000 And this is so that we can kind of frame and contextualize the discussions and the sessions 01:43.000 --> 01:47.000 that we'll have in the rest of the day to come. 01:47.000 --> 01:53.000 And I think those, like Bradley mentioned, those who attend this dev room 01:53.000 --> 01:58.000 traditionally from what I've seen have been quite familiar with the legal frameworks, 01:58.000 --> 02:03.000 but we often also have a lot of developers, a lot of people who are non-boyers, 02:03.000 --> 02:08.000 who do not have a legal background. 02:08.000 --> 02:10.000 So this introduction is for you. 02:10.000 --> 02:15.000 And for the lawyers in the crowd, ask your patients if we go through some very commonly known 02:15.000 --> 02:18.000 language in this field. 02:18.000 --> 02:21.000 So yeah, let's get started. 02:21.000 --> 02:26.000 Yeah, when we talk about law and Free Software, a lot of the time lawyers would be 02:26.000 --> 02:29.000 simply thinking about intellectual property law. 02:29.000 --> 02:34.000 And I know in this Boston crowd, among developers, there's some philosophical discussions 02:34.000 --> 02:40.000 about the term intellectual property, about the limitations of how it's defined, 02:40.000 --> 02:45.000 about whether it's an accurate description of what we're talking about. 02:45.000 --> 02:49.000 But for the context of what we'll be talking about today, 02:49.000 --> 02:54.000 we're going to talk about intellectual property law as the rules are established. 02:54.000 --> 02:59.000 So it's an unfortunate side effect that we will have to use the term intellectual property 02:59.000 --> 03:02.000 as I guess a short hand. 03:03.000 --> 03:07.000 Yeah, and when we discuss legal issues around Free Software, 03:07.000 --> 03:13.000 it is almost in a scalable way that we always have to talk about one aspect of intellectual property law 03:13.000 --> 03:16.000 and then it's copyright law. 03:16.000 --> 03:19.000 So what is copyright? 03:19.000 --> 03:23.000 Yeah, that's my intellectual property law professor from the years ago. 03:23.000 --> 03:27.000 So nicely put it in her textbook, which I still used today. 03:28.000 --> 03:33.000 Copyright is a legal construct that grants someone exclusive rights 03:33.000 --> 03:36.000 over a particular piece of creative work. 03:36.000 --> 03:38.000 Now what does that mean? 03:38.000 --> 03:43.000 So when we talk about a creative work, this is a very broad definition. 03:43.000 --> 03:50.000 A lot of things can be considered to be a creative work as long as it's created by a creator 03:50.000 --> 03:53.000 or we usually refer to them as an author. 03:53.000 --> 03:57.000 So this would include things like written expression, a poem, 03:57.000 --> 04:00.000 an essay, a book. 04:00.000 --> 04:05.000 It can be a piece of music, a song, a jingle, a film, 04:05.000 --> 04:08.000 a bloody blood law, et cetera. 04:08.000 --> 04:13.000 And for our purpose of today, of course, source code and software 04:13.000 --> 04:19.000 are also considered to be creative works that are protected by copyright. 04:19.000 --> 04:26.000 So by default, only the copyright vendor or the author 04:26.000 --> 04:31.000 is allowed to make copies of a work and to get copies of the work to serve parties. 04:31.000 --> 04:37.000 That's the main right that is provided by copyright, right? 04:37.000 --> 04:43.000 The rights that provided are implicitly defined by the term itself, 04:43.000 --> 04:46.000 the right to make copies. 04:46.000 --> 04:51.000 And by default, only the copyright holder has the exclusive rights to modify the work 04:51.000 --> 04:53.000 and to make it publicly available. 04:53.000 --> 04:56.000 And in the case of software, that for example means only the copyright holder 04:56.000 --> 05:02.000 has the right to offer it up for download for example. 05:02.000 --> 05:07.000 Now the main takeaway that you should kind of get from the definition of copyright 05:07.000 --> 05:11.000 is that copyright applies by default. 05:11.000 --> 05:17.000 So as soon as someone makes a creative work, copyright is created as well. 05:17.000 --> 05:21.000 It's inherent in the creative work. 05:21.000 --> 05:25.000 The author inherently possesses the copyright 05:25.000 --> 05:28.000 over that piece of work that they have just created. 05:28.000 --> 05:32.000 But in terms of free software, this presents kind of a legal issue 05:32.000 --> 05:36.000 with this kind of a legal problem because this means that when you like source code 05:36.000 --> 05:43.000 when you create a software program, that program that source code is inherently un-free by default. 05:43.000 --> 05:47.000 Yeah. 05:47.000 --> 05:53.000 And I also think back to this funny tweet by Kat Walsh, who is also a lawyer. 05:53.000 --> 05:58.000 But many years ago, the kind of encapsulates the situation 05:58.000 --> 06:03.000 and the misconceptions that a lot of people might have regarding creating software. 06:03.000 --> 06:07.000 So the original tweet says, you know, give me a hard story from your speciality. 06:07.000 --> 06:13.000 He five words or less, and Kat says, no license means public domain. 06:13.000 --> 06:22.000 And yeah, this is kind of a hard story, but lawyers, you know, because as we said, you know, copyright is inherent. 06:22.000 --> 06:25.000 And software is non-free by default. 06:25.000 --> 06:27.000 So it doesn't mean that it's public domain. 06:27.000 --> 06:34.000 And, you know, in our work at the FSF, we often also see a lot of developers 06:34.000 --> 06:39.000 become across quite a few developers who do not license their work. 06:39.000 --> 06:42.000 And they think that, you know, okay, because I've written the source code 06:42.000 --> 06:47.000 because I've created this piece of software with my intent to make it free software. 06:47.000 --> 06:49.000 You know, it must be free software. 06:49.000 --> 06:53.000 But as we've seen from the definition of copyright, this is not the case. 06:53.000 --> 06:56.000 If you create it, it is inherently copyrighted. 06:56.000 --> 07:00.000 And therefore, it is inherently proprietary software. 07:00.000 --> 07:01.000 Yeah. 07:01.000 --> 07:04.000 And similarly, we've also seen some developers, you know, 07:04.000 --> 07:08.000 they come across interesting repositories online. 07:08.000 --> 07:12.000 And these repositories might not have a license attached to them. 07:12.000 --> 07:16.000 And some people might think, okay, there's no license. 07:16.000 --> 07:18.000 Therefore, it's public domain. 07:19.000 --> 07:22.000 Therefore, I'm within my rights to kind of take the source code. 07:22.000 --> 07:24.000 I can reuse it into my own repositories. 07:24.000 --> 07:26.000 And they do that. 07:26.000 --> 07:31.000 And that is a legal problem in itself as well, because as we've been through, 07:31.000 --> 07:34.000 no license means copyright. 07:34.000 --> 07:36.000 And they're not allowed to do that. 07:36.000 --> 07:40.000 So what they've done is actually technically illegal. 07:40.000 --> 07:42.000 Yes. 07:43.000 --> 07:48.000 So as we now know, no license actually needs the copyright holder 07:48.000 --> 07:50.000 has ultimate control over the project. 07:50.000 --> 07:53.000 It means that you cannot copy or use anything in there. 07:53.000 --> 07:56.000 And that's why you have licensing, right? 07:56.000 --> 08:01.000 The license is there to kind of change the status of the software 08:01.000 --> 08:04.000 from being unfree by default. 08:04.000 --> 08:10.000 And software basically has to be big into free software, right? 08:10.000 --> 08:13.000 Through the application of a license. 08:13.000 --> 08:16.000 And to be more specific, it needs to be made free software 08:16.000 --> 08:20.000 through the application of a free software license. 08:20.000 --> 08:24.000 Sorry, I have a very bad memory, so I need my notes. 08:24.000 --> 08:25.000 Yeah. 08:25.000 --> 08:27.000 So what is the license? 08:27.000 --> 08:31.000 So generally, a license is an official permission 08:31.000 --> 08:35.000 granted to do use or to own something. 08:35.000 --> 08:38.000 And I think it's useful to think of something like a driver's license. 08:38.000 --> 08:39.000 Right? 08:39.000 --> 08:42.000 If you break down on the driver's license actually is, 08:42.000 --> 08:47.000 it is a specific permission granted to you by the state, right? 08:47.000 --> 08:51.000 To allow you to drive your car on the roads. 08:51.000 --> 08:56.000 And you do not have the inherent right to drive your car on the roads, right? 08:56.000 --> 09:00.000 You don't see 10 year olds or whatever being allowed to just, you know, 09:00.000 --> 09:03.000 go up on the roads just because, you know, 09:03.000 --> 09:06.000 because they don't have the inherent right to do so. 09:06.000 --> 09:10.000 And you need to be able to get permission in order to do so. 09:10.000 --> 09:12.000 And you get that permission through your driver's license. 09:12.000 --> 09:16.000 So if you apply that kind of thinking in the context of software, 09:16.000 --> 09:22.000 the license therefore functions as a permission given to you by the license sore 09:22.000 --> 09:28.000 or the copyright holder that kind of defines the terms, 09:28.000 --> 09:34.000 under which the copyright holder allows you to use their software, right? 09:35.000 --> 09:39.000 And if this license is given to you, 09:39.000 --> 09:43.000 if this license also grants you the third freedoms of free software, 09:43.000 --> 09:47.000 the freedoms to use, to study, to share, and to improve the software, 09:47.000 --> 09:52.000 that software is free software and that license is a free software license. 09:52.000 --> 09:59.000 Now you also get licenses that grant you one or more of the fourth freedom, 09:59.000 --> 10:01.000 but not all of the fourth freedom. 10:01.000 --> 10:05.000 And if you have a license that doesn't give you all four freedoms, 10:05.000 --> 10:08.000 unfortunately, that is a proprietary software license, right? 10:08.000 --> 10:13.000 So you need all four of the four freedoms in order for that software to be considered 10:13.000 --> 10:15.000 to be free software. 10:15.000 --> 10:20.000 Not a single one can be missing in order for it to be considered free software license. 10:20.000 --> 10:25.000 Otherwise, we would consider that a proprietary software license. 10:25.000 --> 10:26.000 Yeah. 10:26.000 --> 10:30.000 And for developers, if you're going to choose a license, 10:30.000 --> 10:34.000 yeah, you need to be aware of the different types of free software license or, 10:34.000 --> 10:37.000 sorry, the different types of licenses out there. 10:37.000 --> 10:43.000 So I've been kind of categorized them into four categories up on this slide here. 10:43.000 --> 10:46.000 You have your public domain licenses. 10:46.000 --> 10:49.000 You have your permissive licenses, your copy of that licenses, 10:49.000 --> 10:52.000 and your proprietary licenses, right? 10:52.000 --> 10:58.000 So basically, yeah, software licenses can be classified into these categories. 10:58.000 --> 11:03.000 Based on the types of rights that are granted or the types of rights that are retained 11:03.000 --> 11:05.000 to the copyright offer, 11:05.000 --> 11:11.000 all the types of obligations that are placed on the user in order to allow them to use the software. 11:11.000 --> 11:16.000 So in one of the spectrum, you have your public domain licenses. 11:16.000 --> 11:22.000 And these licenses basically kind of act as waivers of copyright. 11:22.000 --> 11:32.000 They want to transfer all or almost all of the copyrights from the copyright holder over to the public. 11:32.000 --> 11:37.000 And when the owner of the copyrights waves all this rights, 11:37.000 --> 11:44.000 the software is considered to be part of the public domain. 11:44.000 --> 11:47.000 So in some jurisdictions, 11:47.000 --> 11:53.000 the owner waving their copyright might not work to place the work in the public domain. 11:53.000 --> 11:58.000 In Germany, for example, the copyright holder might be able to say, 11:58.000 --> 12:10.000 I wave all my copyrights, but it's not, can I continue? 12:10.000 --> 12:11.000 Yes, yes, sir. 12:11.000 --> 12:17.000 Yes, it doesn't really work to place that work in the public domain. 12:17.000 --> 12:22.000 In such cases, the use of certain types of licenses can be useful to do that. 12:22.000 --> 12:30.000 And a commonly used license to do this is the Creative Commons CC0 license. 12:30.000 --> 12:38.000 And this essentially allows authors or copyright holders to kind of wave their copyrights to their work 12:38.000 --> 12:46.000 and place them as completely as possible in the public domain. 12:46.000 --> 12:52.000 And then you have your permissive licenses, which we also call non-recipical licenses. 12:52.000 --> 12:57.000 So they refer to free software licenses that guarantee that the users are, 12:57.000 --> 13:01.000 they're able to enjoy all the four freedoms of free software. 13:02.000 --> 13:12.000 But we also call them permissive licenses because these licenses come with minimal requirements about how the software can be modified and redistributed. 13:12.000 --> 13:21.000 So in other words, they come with minimal licenses, sorry, with minimal obligations placed on the user by the license sort, 13:21.000 --> 13:27.000 in order for them to use the software and that's why they're kind of called permissive. 13:27.000 --> 13:33.000 And the drawback to these kind of licenses is that because they are no, 13:33.000 --> 13:40.000 that there's not so much restrictions being incorporated into the license terms because they are so called permissive, 13:40.000 --> 13:48.000 downstream variations of the original work can be realized and can be made into proprietary software. 13:48.000 --> 14:01.000 And yeah, as an advocate for free software, this kind of, we can kind of see that this is a drawback to having as much free software out there in the ecosystem as we can. 14:01.000 --> 14:06.000 And examples of these kinds of licenses would be your MIT license or your party license, 14:06.000 --> 14:15.000 and I think I'm not sure if my statistics are up to date, but I think the MIT license is the most widely used free software license out there. 14:15.000 --> 14:30.000 I might be wrong, those numbers, I looked at a couple of years ago, some things might have changed, but yeah, it is a very, very commonly used license, the MIT license. 14:30.000 --> 14:38.000 And then you have another category of licenses, copy that license, which we also refer to as reciprocal licenses. 14:38.000 --> 14:47.000 And these are also free software licenses, they have license terms that grant the full free answer free software to users. 14:47.000 --> 14:59.000 But the underlying idea behind copy left licenses is that these licenses, they give you, or they place on you certain types of obligations. 14:59.000 --> 15:21.000 So you can modify the license code and you can distribute new work based on it, but if you do so, you are obligated to distribute your derivative work on the same license terms under the same license as the license that you received the work from. 15:21.000 --> 15:32.000 So this is kind of, that's why we call this reciprocal, you know, you reciprocate the license terms in your derivative work based on the original license terms that you received the work under. 15:32.000 --> 15:47.000 And you can see the kind of difference in copy left licenses from your permissive licenses in this regard, because of this obligation to maintain the license terms in any downstream variations. 15:47.000 --> 15:57.000 Yeah, you ensure that there is as much free software, there is as much of the full freedoms in downstream variations of versions of the code. 15:57.000 --> 16:14.000 And this is, I think, kind of, one of the best ways we have, I would say, to kind of ensure that the ecosystem has as much free software out there as we can as we can. 16:14.000 --> 16:26.000 And yeah, examples of a couple of licenses would include your GPL, family of licenses, and also your European Union public license, the UPL. 16:26.000 --> 16:43.000 Yeah, and of course, as I mentioned before, if you have a license that provides only three or less or like if it doesn't fully provide all four freedoms. 16:43.000 --> 16:55.000 Of free software, how much you have is a proprietary license, and that's on the other end of the spectrum from your, from your other free software license, right. 16:55.000 --> 17:08.000 So yeah, I could talk much longer about free software, copyright licensing and the nitty gritty of all these stuff, but I think we are quite limited by time today. 17:08.000 --> 17:18.000 So I won't go on into these details. I will mention that at the FSE, we do conduct training on basic legal topics relating to free software. 17:18.000 --> 17:32.000 So if you have a team of developers who you think would benefit from a much more detailed basic legal kind of explanation of law and free software. 17:32.000 --> 17:42.000 Now, please feel free to get in contact with us. I will leave our contact information at the end of this presentation, right. 17:42.000 --> 17:52.000 But I like to quickly pivot now away from the intellectual property law to talk a bit more generally about law and free software in general, right. 17:52.000 --> 18:01.000 So yeah, free software has had quite a long history now. I would say the GNU project was established in 1983. 18:01.000 --> 18:10.000 The free software foundation was founded in 1985, and the four freedoms of free software were published in 1986. 18:10.000 --> 18:17.000 Yeah, and that's basically like what? 40 over 40 years of history of free software. 18:17.000 --> 18:24.000 And in that time, people have been kind of purring over the minutia of this licenses out there. 18:24.000 --> 18:38.000 You know, we've been developing complicated bodies of law, of knowledge and of texts, documenting and talking about things like licensing, compatibility, all the... 18:38.000 --> 18:46.000 Yeah, if doing with all the nuances of licensing of copyright law, both for free software and for proprietary software. 18:46.000 --> 19:00.000 And that can be very interesting for law nerds, such as myself, but it's also important to remember why we have these discussions about licensing, what about copyright about law and free software. 19:00.000 --> 19:16.000 And at the end of the day, for free software advocates, you know, licensing copyright, intellectual property law, applications of the laws and regulations, they're there to serve a larger societal social purpose, right. 19:16.000 --> 19:23.000 And that's to support, uphold, and to be able to enforce the free, the free, the free freedoms in society. 19:23.000 --> 19:30.000 And I think it's very important that we don't use sight of that greater kind of goal. 19:30.000 --> 19:38.000 Because for those of us who believe in the rule of law in democratic systems that protect our fundamental rights and in free software, 19:38.000 --> 19:52.000 I think it's easy to see how the first freedoms are essential towards building a kind of a transparent, open free digital society that kind of benefits the every man, the every person. 19:52.000 --> 20:03.000 And it's very important to have these laws and rules down on the books that clearly support the four freedoms. 20:03.000 --> 20:11.000 And yeah, one legal tool that we can use to accomplish that is actually strategic litigation or another word for is impact litigation. 20:11.000 --> 20:17.000 And I'll just borrow the definition from the European Center for constitutional and human rights. 20:17.000 --> 20:26.000 Yeah, strategic litigation is legal action seeking to bring about social change with an impact beyond the individual case. 20:26.000 --> 20:31.000 It gives a platform for people affected by rights violations to be seen and heard. 20:31.000 --> 20:38.000 It triggers discussions of these violations and it highlights weaknesses and gaps in the law. 20:38.000 --> 20:43.000 And this is something that we can see happening as well for software freedom. 20:43.000 --> 20:50.000 For supporting people who should have access to the four freedoms being denied them in some purpose. 20:50.000 --> 21:05.000 Like, for example, when companies do not abide by license terms when they receive source code or software that might be licensed under free software license. 21:06.000 --> 21:19.000 And I like to point out this example in the Spanish Supreme Court of a kind of a successful relatively successful example of a strategic litigation in the field of free software. 21:19.000 --> 21:23.000 So I'll just quickly go through the facts of the case with this case. 21:23.000 --> 21:28.000 So that's the in Spain. 21:29.000 --> 21:35.000 I don't know if there's any Spanish people in the audience here, so please correct me if I'm wrong about this policy. 21:35.000 --> 21:45.000 But there is a policy existing in which low income households are able to receive discounts on their electricity bills. 21:45.000 --> 21:54.000 And as of 2015, this policy was administered by a state run software called Bosco. 21:54.000 --> 22:10.000 And during that time when Bosco was introduced, many people, many households who were technically supposed to receive who were supposed to have been considered eligible to receive this discount. 22:10.000 --> 22:15.000 They found themselves being rejected in their applications by Bosco. 22:15.000 --> 22:25.000 So this led to kind of the suspicion that, okay, maybe the law might be correct in who it wants to provide discounts to. 22:25.000 --> 22:37.000 But the source code of the program that's being administered to to give out these vouchers might not be working as intended in accordance with the policy. 22:37.000 --> 22:46.000 So because of these suspicions, one thing led to another and that ended up with a civil society nonprofit named Sidio, 22:46.000 --> 22:51.000 suing the Spanish state for access to Bosco's source code. 22:51.000 --> 23:03.000 So what's important to what we're talking about here today is that, well, the results of this judicial process, it went all the way up to the Spanish Supreme Court. 23:03.000 --> 23:09.000 The Supreme Court ruled that are just kind of read this out here. 23:09.000 --> 23:22.000 A general support of transparency and the freedom to study should be supported by clearly stating it clearly stated that Sidio's initial request for access to Bosco's source code should be granted. 23:22.000 --> 23:42.000 Now, in doing so, the Spanish Supreme Court kind of established a president that, you know, if if you are a public administration, you're applying a source code or for purpose that affects social good or kind of society at large. 23:42.000 --> 24:02.000 It is necessary to it is constitutionally necessary to provide transparency and the freedom to study to the public at large because he's because this is extremely important in accordance with the principles of a democratic state. 24:02.000 --> 24:15.000 And basically, we can break the judgment down into these four main points, right access to source code can be needed to verify automated government decisions. 24:15.000 --> 24:22.000 It's kind of disappointing that it can instead of must here, but we take what we can get. 24:22.000 --> 24:37.000 So, called intellectual property rights, do not automatically block transparency. Security concerns must be balanced against democratic accountability and transparency is especially critical for systems that affect our social rights. 24:37.000 --> 24:43.000 So, this case is, I think, a demonstration of what strategic litigation can do in the context of free software, right. 24:43.000 --> 24:52.000 It can bring about broad social changes beyond the scope of the individual case at hand, if we go back to the definition that we were talking about earlier. 24:52.000 --> 25:05.000 And yeah, it's another legal tool, basically, in our arsenal, to, in addition to, like, complying with and to applying copyright laws and licensing. 25:05.000 --> 25:14.000 It's another legal tool to tackle free software issues that have not been adequately addressed in legislation in policy and in the law. 25:14.000 --> 25:38.000 And I think, additionally, one of the other issues or problems that free software has kind of traditionally grappled with is the lack of knowledge at large about free, about software freedom and kind of digital technological functions in the legal profession, right. 25:38.000 --> 25:46.000 So, like, lawyers drafting arguments or judges presiding over cases or drafting legislation, etc. 25:46.000 --> 25:58.000 They might not have the same kind of knowledge that developers or lawyers were really into this kind of technological side of things might have. 25:58.000 --> 26:09.000 When that is always a problem in how rules are interpreted with regards to software. 26:09.000 --> 26:16.000 And with strategic litigation, it kind of forces lawyers kind of forces judges to confront these topics. 26:16.000 --> 26:27.000 And I think we've come quite a long way now with more judges and lawyers understanding concepts around software freedom and software licensing in general. 26:28.000 --> 26:43.000 Right, hopefully for those here today, this we're not particularly immersed in the legal side of things that gives you some idea of the basis and the actions on which legal topics in free software are built on. 26:43.000 --> 26:55.000 And from the perspective of someone who's not developer, I've never been on the creative end of things with regards to software I've always been a lawyer. 26:55.000 --> 27:12.000 But, you know, I, I was born in the 80s, I grew up in the 90s and that was kind of a time where we saw kind of rapid technological progress, right, in terms of our digital technology that the the every person is has access to. 27:12.000 --> 27:16.000 And the kind of digital connectivity that was available to us. 27:16.000 --> 27:21.000 And, yeah, I mean, it, it felt like it opened up the world. 27:21.000 --> 27:37.000 It felt like it made knowledge, experiences much more accessible, made me feel more free for one, even if I didn't necessarily have the technological expertise or knowledge to fully take advantage of what software had to offer. 27:37.000 --> 27:42.000 But, you know, I think if we look back on the last decade, things have kind of changed. 27:42.000 --> 27:58.000 We've had to watch digital technology and digital connectivity kind of get increasingly captured, right, by those with the most resources by mega corporations, by state governments, by special interests of the wealthy. 27:58.000 --> 28:06.000 And I think there's this pervasive feeling, and at least I feel this pervasive feeling that techno optimism is kind of did. 28:06.000 --> 28:18.000 With every new digital technological development now, there's less excitement, there's less hope about how we can improve our lives and more this feeling of oh god what now. 28:19.000 --> 28:33.000 And I mean, personally, I don't think that free software and the four freedoms are the server bullets are the singular thing that will cure all the social else that is kind of enabled by digital technology to date. 28:33.000 --> 28:44.000 But I definitely think that, you know, free software is a foundational part of that solution, right, of guaranteeing through the four freedoms that. 28:44.000 --> 28:47.000 The other kind of foundational rights that we have. 28:47.000 --> 28:55.000 So I think it's valuable to think about what other legal instruments, what other rights we have in that are assured to us legally. 28:55.000 --> 29:08.000 Yeah, under other legal instruments, you know, if you think about things like the European Convention of Human Rights, if you think about your constitutional rights granted to you or the bills of rights that are available to you in your own countries. 29:08.000 --> 29:15.000 Yeah, those are the fundamental and foundational rights that you show us also be thinking about what you think about free software. 29:15.000 --> 29:24.000 Because, you know, we live in a world where so much of how we function in daily life and in society depends on software. 29:24.000 --> 29:31.000 It's not difficult to see how free software supports our ability to enjoy these other rights, you know. 29:31.000 --> 29:44.000 So think about like things like your right to privacy, right, like free software helps by allowing us to know what the software that we're using is doing with the data that we provide it. 29:44.000 --> 29:47.000 Think of things like your right to vote. 29:47.000 --> 29:57.000 There's so many jurisdictions now that use or employ some some kind of electronic voting, even here in Europe. 29:57.000 --> 30:08.000 And, you know, can you be assured that the software involved in these kinds of processes is registering and is counting your vote properly. 30:08.000 --> 30:13.000 If it's not open for review, if you do not have the freedom to study its source code. 30:13.000 --> 30:17.000 Think about something like the right to be free from discrimination, you know. 30:18.000 --> 30:30.000 How many companies are out there, you know, that you some kind of electronic or digital applicant tracking system, right, to filter and to process their job applications. 30:30.000 --> 30:44.000 And, how can you be assured that, for example, it isn't discounting someone with a non-European sounding name, for example, how can you know that for sure if that software is not transparent, if you don't have access to the source code. 30:44.000 --> 31:04.000 And so, like, I mean, these are just some examples that I've put together, but I think you can find a lot more if you kind of also examine how software affects or how it processes or how it is used in other kind of rights and other kind of daily things that we do in our lives. 31:04.000 --> 31:11.000 So, yeah, it is of the utmost importance that we establish rules and laws to support the four three terms of free software. 31:12.000 --> 31:26.000 Yeah, and it's important that we make sure that these rules are followed and enforced to ensure that, you know, our civil, political, economic, social, cultural rights are not easily threatened by closed technological development. 31:26.000 --> 31:35.000 And, yeah, I think that's something that we will be able to kind of discuss and see here today as the dev room progresses throughout the day. 31:35.000 --> 31:41.000 Yeah, and, you know, I think we'll be hearing more from our speakers on this as well. 31:41.000 --> 31:55.000 Like, I see on the schedule that Denver Gingrich from the Software Freedom Conservancy will be talking about also other strategic litigation efforts that they're involved in against visual in their efforts to enforce the GPL. 31:55.000 --> 32:07.000 We'll also have a panel discussion later discussing interoperability regulations in the EU and which regards to iOS and Android and it's also. 32:07.000 --> 32:24.000 It's valuable to remember that Apple is currently umbrella in kind of a litigation effort to resist its designation as a gatekeeper under the digital market's acts of that something that I think we can discuss later in the death. 32:24.000 --> 32:38.000 We'll see a more about the policy efforts that speakers are working with on a national level ranging from the Netherlands to Taiwan and also at a EU level with the discussions about this year and the DMA. 32:39.000 --> 32:47.000 But I think when we go through all these talks, it always bears remembering the foundational point, right? 32:47.000 --> 33:02.000 How is this software? How does this legislation? How does this law, this action? How do these laws that apply? How do they support the first freedoms and in so doing, do they support a digital democracy and our fundamental rights? 33:02.000 --> 33:12.000 And I guess that's all I have for today. I'll conclude and hand the floor back over to the devroom organizers. 33:12.000 --> 33:20.000 But if you'd like to get in touch with us with me or with us as a fee, our contact information is up here on the screen. 33:20.000 --> 33:22.000 So thank you. 33:32.000 --> 33:39.000 I'm not for whatever. 34:02.000 --> 34:20.000 If you're going for a political role, or you're wanting to influence a political role, can you want to influence a political role, or do you want to influence a political role? 34:20.000 --> 34:27.000 I think that's the best question we'll make for this. 34:27.000 --> 34:33.000 Can I talk that over to you? 34:33.000 --> 34:47.000 I think it's a good idea to look where to look. 34:47.000 --> 35:00.000 Okay, so the question was like, if I may be putting the questions or how do you know how to best approach like your digital politicians, if you want to talk to them, everything to ask them. 35:00.000 --> 35:15.000 So I think it's pretty much depending on the knowledge that politicians might have, so I would do some research beforehand and try to figure out, like, where could be, like, common crown to talk about and then I would start from there. 35:15.000 --> 35:19.000 So there might be some that talk about technological or digital. 35:19.000 --> 35:37.000 As a run or T-day state, these days, or that, like, at rest, I'd already, the development of things we have, this big tackle, something like this, and this is where I would just try to research around this person and try to figure out what he's already talking about and try to find common crown and start from there. 35:37.000 --> 35:46.000 And then start this introduction of, like, free software, why it's good to have and what are the benefits compared to the properties of it, and then go from there. 35:46.000 --> 35:53.000 So I would not, like, give a general answer to this, but recommend to do some research beforehand in the first place. 35:53.000 --> 35:54.000 Lovely. 35:54.000 --> 36:05.000 Also, maybe another announcement, so we try to keep the doors open during the break now to get some better air, and we also have some air purifiers here, but that's all what we can do. 36:05.000 --> 36:15.000 So we are limited to these few windows that we can open, so we're just sorry about that, we try to get in fresh air, but that's the only thing what we can do. 36:15.000 --> 36:33.000 Also, we can't really ask you to take seats, so please do not stand against the walls or, like, hang around in the room, but please take seats, that's for security reasons here, that for some people would pretty much appreciate it to take seats. 36:33.000 --> 36:49.000 Yeah, so it's all like the effect in the middle of the chairs, try to make place for others, so that when people end up doing the talks that they easily can find the seat that would help us a lot. 36:49.000 --> 36:58.000 If you have to leave in the middle of a talk, it's totally fine, that's a buzz and all about if you want to come in or leave, but try to use the door in the back, it'll be a lot less disruptive to the talk. 36:58.000 --> 37:03.000 Does anybody have any other questions for Gabriel about introductions to legal issues? 37:28.000 --> 37:41.000 Okay, so the question was, how much code do you need to write before it can be considered copyrightable? 37:41.000 --> 37:44.000 I think that's a tricky question. 37:44.000 --> 38:05.000 You give an example that I have no idea about, as I mentioned, I'm not a developer, I'm a lawyer, but there is something called a threshold of originality in copyright, so you need to cross this threshold in order for your contribution or what you create it to be considered copyrightable. 38:05.000 --> 38:13.000 It's difficult for me to explain or express this in the short time that we have. 38:13.000 --> 38:28.000 I would say it needs to be something substantive, and if you write something like, hello world is absolutely not copyrightable, it's simple enough that it's not copyrightable. 38:28.000 --> 38:41.000 I think that the general threat for what something is considered copyrightable is, did you have some kind of intellectual intent behind creating a creative work? 38:41.000 --> 38:52.000 And then we go from there, I'm sorry, I have little an article about this, a lot of it escapes my mind now, because as I said, I have a very bad memory. 38:52.000 --> 39:08.000 It is on our legal corner, and you can read it, it's an article about the threshold regionality, in which we have some examples, I think, when you look through it, it can help you understand the threshold regionality a bit better. 39:09.000 --> 39:21.000 From the US perspective, there's no like some people have it in the past sort of set a certain number of lines of code is the right minimum under US copyright that that's simply not the case. 39:21.000 --> 39:32.000 It's similar to what Gabriel said, which is that it needs to be a work of creative expression expressed in a tangible medium, so it has to be creative expression. 39:32.000 --> 39:43.000 So something very, very simple would not be that the threshold has generally been pretty low as interpreted, I think that might be changing in the way that copyright laws are being interpreted, but it'll be interesting to see. 39:43.000 --> 39:53.000 But there's definitely like no easy bright line test, so it's a little complicated, but you can probably assume that if you're putting something that has copyright. 39:53.000 --> 40:12.000 Sorry, I saw that you have a question and you have a question, but I know, but I just also wanted to mention something interesting, because they have been cases where two people have kind of created the exact or more or less the exact same thing, and because both of them have acted independently and with this kind of creative intent, both of their works have separate copyright over them as well. 40:12.000 --> 40:21.000 So that's something to also think about. It's very subjective, and it depends on the intent and how the individual creator has done so. 40:21.000 --> 40:24.000 I'll just move on, yes, your question? 40:24.000 --> 40:48.000 Yeah, so the question was about, like, I suppose, like, how do you consider copyright over AI-generated LM-generated works? 40:48.000 --> 41:04.000 Yeah, I think currently the general consensus in copyright law is that for a work to be considered copyrightable, it needs to be created by human being, right? 41:04.000 --> 41:16.000 In practice, I don't know how you can actually kind of prove that, if someone comes up and says, oh, I'm going to copy this, because it's not copyrightable, it's created by AI. 41:16.000 --> 41:24.000 And someone just says, no, I wrote this, you know, there's no practical way, currently, so it's kind of a gray area, right? 41:24.000 --> 41:39.000 And yeah, I mean, I think I'm not too sure Karen, stop me if I'm just rambling something, but I think it's also depends on kind of the terms and conditions of the model that you're using and how they define it. 41:39.000 --> 41:44.000 As I said, it's a gray area, it's not really been litigated. 41:44.000 --> 41:55.000 Yeah, there's no general consensus, like, the cases are important. 41:55.000 --> 42:00.000 Yeah. 42:00.000 --> 42:10.000 Yeah, it depends. 42:10.000 --> 42:15.000 Yeah, so thank you, and I'll wrap it up.