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Comment by chx | Hacker News Reader

Ah you misunderstand.

All free software licenses grant you additional rights on top of copyright law. These rights allow you to make copies of the software given certain conditions. If you violate them then they do not apply and only copyright law applies so any copies you made are illegal.

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>copyright law applies

First that's not true and even if that would be only true in the US. Since the US is not THE "law" you cant say that.

Also:

>Under the current law, works created on or after January 1, 1978, have a copyright term of life of the author plus seventy years after the author's death.

https://www.copyright.gov/what-is-copyright/

So when Gates dies and i violate Microsofts License 7 years later i can have DOS 6.22 for free and redistribute it right?

Copyright law is universal under the Berne Convention and it prevents unlicensed duplicates of the software from legally being distributed. This is not US law, it's law everywhere, even the very few countries which are not signatories to the Berne Convention are signatories to TRIPS.

Gates does not hold the copyright for MS DOS 6.22 and it's not 7 years but 70. But yes, eventually yes, see how Sherlock Holmes became public domain. For PC software in 2024 this is not yet relevant, the Berne minimum is death plus 50 and the IBM PC is not yet 50 years old.

Hmm, thanks!

I learned something today,

Even some countries which can't enter these international conventions because they are not part of the UN/WIPO due to lack of wide diplomatic recognition have laws to honor copyright as prescribed in Berne, it's too important for international trade. For example, part of the Stabilization and Association Agreement the European Union made with Kosovo included IP laws including copyright. https://cps.rks-gov.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/LAW_NO._0...

Under US law, for works created by companies the term is a flat 95 years from publication, so MS-DOS 6.22 will become public domain on January 1 2090.

You and I will likely be dead.

Which is an atrocity. Depriving everyone of the ability to build on existing works until those works are ancient history is absurd and there is no way this is a good deal for society.

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