Why is &quot;as is&quot; in quotes in the GPL? In the GPL, why do they put quotes around the phrase here: EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. It doesn't seem to require them, but this is a legal document that's gone through multiple drafts and been approved by committee each time, so I'd assume some thought went into it. Unless they just happened to find an "entire group of people" all of whom have an abiding and perverse love of "extraneous punctuation".
"as is" is likely in quotation marks because it reflects its usage in the Uniform Commercial Code. Although in the UCC it is reasonably clear that the quotation marks serve to delineate the example from the text, legal drafting is generally precise and by using the same form it unambiguously refers to its usage therein. Another reason is that in this circumstance, it doesn't necessarily take on its ordinary meaning, but rather the meaning stipulated, and with the effect stipulated, in the UCC. Finally, the UCC stipulates that the exclusion of warranty must be conspicuous. Adding quotation marks may help to show that it was set apart from the rest of the text.
It seems that you don’t understand what parody is. If you do understand, please explain how it’s even possible to parody computer code. What you can do with “open source” code depends on the licence the copyright holder(s) release it under. For some very permissive licences you can do what you suggest, for most, you can’t.
Without a license, you have no right to copy or distribute someone else's work. Suppose you copy or distribute against the terms of the license. Either you didn't agree to the license, and therefore had no right to do as you did; or you did agree and still violated the terms of the license anyway. By the law of the excluded middle (accepted or not accepted), you infringed either way.
OK, seems I was right to begin with, but after building some work with this I had to be sure. The problem seems to step from a lot of not-lawyers overinterpreting the reach and applicability of copyright law, which, with a few asides, is the full extent of the AGPL. Additionally, the software is not based in an English-speaking country, which may have thrown the interpreted meaning of &quot;derivative product&quot;, as opposed to simply &quot;product&quot;. The AGPL is indeed in almost all ways the same as the GPL version 3; in fact you can see this by diffing the two documents. The only extension of the GPLv3 made for AGPL applies to software being run on a server. While it is indeed possible to include code in the final files, which might, in theory, constitute a significant portion of this program, that does not happen. The AGPL is apparently also meant almost exclusively for software, though the wording does include the ambiguous phrase &quot;and other products&quot;; this concerned me as it felt as though it might apply to the resources created by the work. It, broadly speaking, does not. So, I've got nothing to worry about--unless I was distributing derivative software, which would be an entirely different question and subject to this.
It doesn't matter. When a contract is left ambiguous the interpretation that is used is the one that is the most favorable to the party that did not draft the contract, under the logic that if the party that did draft the contract chose all the wording and thus, they could have stated their interpretation in the contract just avoided this whole mess in the first place. A similar rule exists in criminal law, where if the law is ambiguous, the interpretation used is the one most favorable to the defendant, since the state could have drafted it in a way that made their interpretation clear.
Summary from comments. (Hat tip @jqning) Daniel Nathan Ballard writes here: [It] is not only improper it is UNLAWFUL and may result in serious repercussions... Such a misuse may constitute false advertising... (“It is no doubt true” that affixing the ‘Trade Mark Registered U.S. Patent Office” notice on goods that are not protected by a federally registered trademark creates “a prima facie case of fraud against the public… .”). ... Such use is also a form of “unclean hands” that can bar the user’s registration of the mark. ... Such a use may also bar the maintenance of an infringement case. ... And the fraudulent use of the trademark registration symbol DOES provide other marketplace participants with standing to oppose the user’s registration of the mark. http://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/use-of---symbol-but-not-federally-registered-1125746.html
Unless you have a legally valid IP right related to the specification that statement is meaningless. When a software license is granted it is based on the copyright of the code. The copyright of the spec. just stops people from copying the spec - it does not protect the information in it. You can restrict copying of the spec. under copyright, you can make up a name for the spec (like USB or Bluetooth) and get a trademark and only allow the trademark use in limited cases(doesn’t stop implementation of the spec), or get a patent that would be necessarily infringed if something complying with the spec was created and used, sold, made, etc. or you can keep it secret and only show it to people who contractually agreed with your terms.
The significant question is whether such a statement as "no copyright infringement intended" will be viewed by the courts as evidence to suggest innocent infringement or rather as evidence to support willful infringement. This consideration of willful versus innocent is relevant when a copyright holder seeks statutory damages. 17 USC §504(c)(2) says (emphasis mine): In a case where the copyright owner sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that infringement was committed willfully, the court in its discretion may increase the award of statutory damages to a sum of not more than $150,000. In a case where the infringer sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that such infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200. Branch v. Ogilvy &amp; Mather, Inc. says of willfulness (emphasis mine): Thus, in order to prove willfulness, a plaintiff must show that the defendant knew or should have known that its conduct constituted copyright infringement. Similarly, in order to establish innocent intent, the defendant must prove that it did not know and should not have known that its conduct constituted infringement. One defense to an allegation of willfulness is the defendant's reasonable and good faith belief that its actions do not constitute copyright infringement. The central question, then, seems to be whether the notice "no copyright infringement intended" aids or harms an argument that the infringer "did not know or should not have known" that they were infringing copyright, or else that they had a "reasonable and good faith belief" of non-infringement. I am not aware of any case law that concerns such a notice, but my layman intuition suggests to me that such a notice lends evidential weight that the defendant did indeed know the work in question was under copyright; since the defendant was therefore aware the work was under copyright, it is unlikely that they could successfully claim a reasonable belief that publicly distributing the entirety of (or a substantial portion of) the work without permission was not infringement. Ultimately, I don't think such a notice does anything to aid the defendant's argument that they "should not have known" their use was infringing. Nor do I think it furthers an argument of "reasonable and good faith belief" by the defendant: the reasonableness of such a belief will rest significantly on the facts of the infringement, not only on how loudly they shouted, "I swear this isn't infringement!" Conversely, such a notice may further the idea that the defendant did know that copyright applied to the work, strengthening the plaintiff's argument that the defendant should have known the use was infringing.