binder@dosadi.DEC (Wherever you go, there you are.) (04/06/85)
In response to Gary Grady: >> ... US laws read that a >> work is copyrighted at the moment of its creation. It is not, however, pro- >> tected in the eyes of the US courts unless its copyright is registered with >> the Library of Congress. > That ain't the way I heard it. Registration gets you the right to > punitive damages and so forth, but you can sue over theft of > unregistered material as well. True, you can indeed sue. Convincing a court that an unregistered work was originally yours is the difficult part, unless you can produce credible disinterested witnesses who will depose that they saw it with your name on it BEFORE THE DEFENDANT COULD >POSSIBLY< HAVE PRODUCED HIS OR HER FIRST COPY. And that's tough, unless one of your witnesses is the defendant's roommate or a close co-worker! Hence, unregistered works are not really protected. The instruction pamphlet that the Registrar of Copyrights supplies to those intending to register makes it clear that the whole point of registration is to provide you with just the proof you might need in court. >> ... heck, xeroxing a book is ALWAYS illegal unless >> the person doing it has written permission from the copyright holder. > No, there's something called the "fair use provision" of the law (a > codification of older common law now in the statute) that permits a > reasonable degree of copying. Copying a part of a book for limited use > is perfectly legal. Not necessarily. It is usually tolerated because enforcement of the copyright protection is not possible, but take a moment to read the notices in a couple of books - here's a fairly standard one: Copyright 1985 by ... All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be re- produced or represented in any form, including but not limited to optical, mechanical, electronic, or magnetic copying, storage, or transmission, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder. Such a statement is crystal clear - you copy my book, even one page, and if I find out about it I'll roast you over a slow fire. Many works include the provision, "except for brief passages by a reviewer for use in a review", which nails it down even tighter by specifying the one permissible incidence of copying. > An aside: Not being overly worshipful of physical objects, I've always > thought the notion of property theft misleading, especially in the case > of intellectual property. If I could easily make a car, it would not > bother me much to have my car stolen. What bothers me is the work it > takes to replace it. It is theft of my labor and my time that disturbs > me. Ah, what a wonderful attitude! :=) I tell you what: You find a nice house that you especially like, perhaps getting a realtor to locate it for you so that your own time and effort will be minimised. Then I'll come and live in it, leaving you to find another. I'll pay you a fair wage for the time you spent looking. I doubt you're ready to agree to such an absurd proposal, but, after all, you shouldn't care - it's just a piece of physical property. > ...Unfortunately, some people feel they have the right to give away or steal > my work because I still have a copy of it and hence nothing has been "stolen". > A little thinking should show that this is irrelevant... The whole premise of intellectual property is just that - though such things are intangibles, i.e., how do you weigh the thought required to produce a line of code, they are still very real. They are an actual investment made in expectation, or at least hope, of a return. Cheers, Dick Binder (The Stainless Steel Rat) UUCP: { decvax, allegra, ucbvax... }!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-dosadi!binder ARPA: binder%dosadi.DEC@decwrl.ARPA Sat 6-Apr-1985 09:10 Eastern Standard Time
murlocker@watdcsu.UUCP (murlocker) (04/07/85)
> > > No, there's something called the "fair use provision" of the law (a > > codification of older common law now in the statute) that permits a > > reasonable degree of copying. Copying a part of a book for limited use > > is perfectly legal. > > Not necessarily. It is usually tolerated because enforcement of the copyright > protection is not possible, but take a moment to read the notices in a couple > of books - here's a fairly standard one: > > Copyright 1985 by ... > > All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be re- > produced or represented in any form, including but not > limited to optical, mechanical, electronic, or magnetic > copying, storage, or transmission, without the prior > written consent of the copyright holder. > Standard copyright provisions which do not mention the allowance of "fair use" copying do not over-ride the copying for fair use, since these are guaranteed by the copyright act. As an aside, I don't know how applicable the fair use laws are to software. Presumably the people who run "software evaluation clubs" are trying to fall into this catagory, but I don't think the courts would agree. mark
dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady) (04/09/85)
> Hence, unregistered works are not really protected. The > instruction pamphlet that the Registrar of Copyrights supplies to those > intending to register makes it clear that the whole point of registration is > to provide you with just the proof you might need in court. My assertion was in response to a posting claiming registration was in fact a prerequisite for a suit, which is simply not so. The claim that "unregistered works are not really protected" belied by a whole pile of case law. (A recent well-publicised example being the victory of Ellison and Bova over a television network.) In fact, the ability to register an unpublished work is an innovation less than a decade old. Please understand that I am not suggesting that registration is unwise as it leads to the practical advantage you describe and grants further rights under the statute (including punitive damages). > > Copying a part of a book for limited use > > is perfectly legal. > Not necessarily. It is usually tolerated because enforcement of the copyright > protection is not possible, but take a moment to read the notices in a couple > of books [...sample copyright notice and warning curse...] > Such a statement is crystal clear - you copy my book, even one page, and if I > find out about it I'll roast you over a slow fire. I don't know about barbequing or compelled firewalking, but you'd have no standing in court. Like the ubiquitous NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR INJURIES... signs, the book notice has no legal force. A copyright page notice cannot rewrite the statute, which very explicitly says that you CAN copy portions of the work under the defined limits of fair use. Take a moment to read the statute, or the excellent American Library Association publication that also summarises the case law. (By the way, there is even a provision of MANDATORY licensing of some works, with royalty being set by a government tribunal.) > The whole premise of intellectual property is just that - though such things > are intangibles, ie, how do you weigh the thought required to produce a line > of code, they are still very real. They are an actual investment made in > expectation, or at least hope, of a return. > Dick Binder (The Stainless Steel Rat) Dear Stainless, I agree with you. Sorry I didn't make that sufficiently clear. What I was getting at was that there is nothing magical about rights to physical property. I consider intellectualy property every bit as "real" (in the philosophical, not legal, sense) as physical. -- D Gary Grady Duke U Comp Center, Durham, NC 27706 (919) 684-3695 USENET: {seismo,decvax,ihnp4,akgua,etc.}!mcnc!ecsvax!dgary