binder@dosadi.DEC (Wherever you go, there you are.) (03/29/85)
This is a short addendum to Elizabeth A. Evans' comments about copyrights on
software.
I've written and published copyrighted material, and the 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. This registration consists of filling out a form
for application and submitting that form together with two copies of the
work and a $10.00 fee to the Registrar of Copyrights.
With regard to making backup copies of software, recent US court decisions
have established that the PURCHASER of a software product has a guaranteed
right to make backup copies, such copies to be used only by whoever is in
possession of the original, for the purpose of recovering from destruction
of that original. What this means is that giving or selling copies to any-
one else, without giving him or her all the backup copies you have made,
or else destroying them, is a violation of the copyright law. It also means
that LENDING a disk to someone and then using a backup copy yourself whilst
the original is out of your hands is a violation of the law. As for a
licensee's right to make backup copies, that's a negotiable item between
the licensee and the licensor.
NOW we come to the line of how this discussion relates to piracy. Piracy
is, and will continue to be, illegal. Period. It will also continue to
exist. Making a tape of an LP album is a violation of the copyright law,
if we give it away or sell it, and videotaping most TV programmes is a
similar violation if done to distrubute copies. So we are back at the fact
that we are all violators - heck, xeroxing a book is ALWAYS illegal unless
the person doing it has written permission from the copyright holder.
The furore that piracy raises is caused, I think, by the fact that we are
computer people. Computers, and their software are for many of us our
livelihood, or soon will be. We feel endangered by pirates. So we invoke
all the legalistic arguments, and when that doesn't work we cry out against
the ethical and moral standards of pirates.
Pirates are, for the most part, young people. They build huge libraries of
pirated games. It's a game, a challenge, for them to crack a protected
disk. So they crow about their success and pass copies around with the
title screens changed to include their noms-de-crack, to prove that it
was actually they who did the job. There is, I admit, some amount of
piracy of utilities, but I really believe that most of the pirated utilities
never get used, for the lack of hardcopy documentation. A friend had a
pirated copy of VisiFile, and he wiped it when he figured out that he didn't
know how to use it... I agree with those who say that piracy can and should
be reduced (it'll never be stopped!). The ways to do that include Borland's
approach, which is hard to emulate. They also include making products so
truly useful that they are worth their cost - this usefulness revolves
largely around making superb hard documentation in addition to good program-
ming, and pricing skilfully, and finally supporting what is sold. Copy
protection isn't the way to do it - the element of challenge is there, and
the legitimate user who isn't a Locksmith or Copy ][+ or Nibbles Away wizard
is stymied when he tries to exercise his legal right to make backups.
Cheers,
Dick Binder
UUCP: {decvax, allegra, ucbvax...}!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-dosadi!binder
ARPA: binder%dosadi.DEC@decwrl.ARPAdgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady) (04/04/85)
> ... 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. > ... 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. The issue is whether enough copying is done so that sales of the original work are potentially damaged. Incidentally, about a year or two ago a major university was hit with (and lost) a substantial suit from a textbook publisher when it transpired several faculty members had been actively producing their own texts for courses by selectivly copying chunks of various anthologies. 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. If I work as a programmer and produce a program, someone presumably pays me for that work. Suppose I work as a software developer (or, for that matter, novelist) and create a package for sale. Each purchaser can then buy the program at a fraction of what it would cost to hire me for a custom program. That should make them happy. In return, I have the potential to make a lot of money (if I'm very lucky), and that should make me happy. 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. Unfortunately, we're so ingrained to think in the convenient shorthand of property rights that we don't think. -- D Gary Grady Duke U Comp Center, Durham, NC 27706 (919) 684-3695 USENET: {seismo,decvax,ihnp4,akgua,etc.}!mcnc!ecsvax!dgary