diff --git a/gpl-lgpl.tex b/gpl-lgpl.tex
index a1ee0d8e7abe7ac023d429fe665f40c552f2851f..0116daa6e0c56c370077fa590edc9ebf8d814785 100644
--- a/gpl-lgpl.tex
+++ b/gpl-lgpl.tex
@@ -2295,7 +2295,19 @@ violation\footnote{\label{German-reinstatement-footnote} While this is legally t
   upstream could make it effectively impossible for a downstream party to
   engage in a commercial redistribution pursuant to
   \hyperref[GPLv2s3]{GPLv2~\S3(a--b)}.  (\S~\ref{upstream} in the Compliance
-  Guide portion of this tutorial discussed related details.)}.
+  Guide portion of this tutorial discussed related details.)}\footnote{In the larger
+  Free Software community, it is generally understood that the copyright permissions
+  of downstream parties are valid regardless whether someone on their distribution
+  chain may have lost their license, because their permissions come from the copyright
+  holder, and the license text grants those permissions (as long as one complies with
+  its conditions). From this perspective, the GPL's ``automatic downstream licensing''
+  provision is a restatement or reinforcement of that obvious rule, not a new or
+  specific clause. This intuition is valuable and one can argue it is not unwarranted,
+  because, among others, there is a fundamental distinction in US copyright law between
+  material object (the copy) and the intellectual content (the work): the physical ``source''
+  from where the downstream licensee got the copy doesn't preclude that they get a license
+  to the content from the copyright holder(s), i.e. the permissions under certain conditions
+  as spelled out in the text.}.
 Downstream's
 licensed rights are not dependent on compliance of their upstream, because
 their licenses issue directly from the copyright holder.  Second, automatic
