Licence laundering or license laundering occurs when a

creative work A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort in the world through a ''creative process'' involving one or more individuals. The term includes fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (li ...

under

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...

is copied by another party, who then replaces the original

licence A license (American English) or licence (Commonwealth English) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another part ...

with a different one. This party then illegitimately distributes the work with the new licence. Licence laundering of media and related files is common on image hosting providers such as Flickr or

Picasa Picasa was a cross-platform image organizer and image viewer for organizing and editing digital photos, integrated with a now defunct photo-sharing website, originally created by a company named Lifescape (which at that time was incubated by ...

, and video hosting providers such as

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

Source code laundering

software development Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...

, a

programmer A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles Software development, ''software developer'' and Software engineering, ''software engineer' ...

engages in licence laundering when using

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

written by one or more other programmers but removing the licence from the source files or altering the file's header to exclude its revision history or other details. This source code is then modified or integrated into other software, possibly violating the original licence terms. Another example is using code released under one licence, and redistributing it under a different licence. After

SCO Group The SCO Group (often referred to SCO and later called The TSG Group) was an American software company in existence from 2002 to 2012 that became known for owning Unix operating system assets that had belonged to the Santa Cruz Operation (the or ...

asserted it owned the

intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...

rights to

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

, a series of SCO/Linux controversies resulted, with SCO Groups

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

Darl McBride stating that "The world is not about stealing people's code, laundering it and saying everything's OK." In '' SCO Group, Inc. v. Novell, Inc.'',

Novell Novell, Inc. () was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as NetWare. Novell technolog ...

was found to be the owner of Unix copyrights. Code for

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

may be released with a pre-approved non-reciprocal licence permitting its use in other projects, which facilitates license laundering. To avoid such laundering, developers and project managers should determine the source of the code, and mitigate potential problems with a

quality assurance Quality assurance (QA) is the term used in both manufacturing and service industries to describe the systematic efforts taken to assure that the product(s) delivered to customer(s) meet with the contractual and other agreed upon performance, design ...

inspection.

Identification

Licence laundering may be identified by detecting inconsistencies in the works. Most content creators use a set of common elements that are consistent throughout their portfolio, for example a style or handwriting. Users engaged in licence laundering typically upload files with a diversity of styles, since the styles reflect those of the author, not the licence laundering uploader. Image licence laundering may be detected by using

reverse image search Reverse image search is a content-based image retrieval (CBIR) Query string, query technique that involves providing the CBIR system with a sample image that it will then base its search upon; in terms of information retrieval, the sample image i ...

engines, such as TinEye or Google Images' "Search by Image" feature. These services compare the characteristics of a reference work to a database containing the characteristics for numerous works analyzed by the service provider by spidering the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...

. The results of a reverse image search may indicate the original source of the content. Another technique involves inspecting the

Exif Exchangeable image file format (officially Exif, according to JEIDA/JEITA/CIPA specifications) is a standard that specifies formats for images, sound, and ancillary tags used by digital cameras (including smartphones), scanners and other system ...

data associated with files. If the data is generally consistent in a set of files, the files were likely generated by the same individual, whereas if the data differ significantly, it may be indicative of a

copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of Copyright#Scope, works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the c ...

. An example is a set of photographs generated by different

camera A camera is an instrument used to capture and store images and videos, either digitally via an electronic image sensor, or chemically via a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. As a pivotal technology in the fields of photograp ...

models.

References

External links

* License laundering on

Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons, or simply Commons, is a wiki-based Digital library, media repository of Open content, free-to-use images, sounds, videos and other media. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. Files from Wikimedia Commons can be used ...

Source code laundering

Identification

References

Further reading

External links