laser-lovers@uw-beaver (04/16/85)
From: William LeFebvre <phil@rice.ARPA>
I'm beginning to doubt it! I just did some investigation into our
purchase of a machine readable form of the Hershey fonts. We signed a
sales aggreement to get them! We also paid $400 for the tape! Since I
wasn't directly involved with the purchase of the tape, I didn't
realize any of this until today.
What's even better is that the agreement is rather brief and vague. I
will quote the pertinent parts:
----------------------------------------
IV. Use of Product
A. Customer agrees that the product shall be used only at the
Customer's place of business or its contracted Computer Service Bureau.
B. Customer agrees not to copy, release, disclose, or
otherwise make the Product available, in its original form, as received
from NTIS. Internal copies made for the sole purpose of disaster
recovery are permissable.
C. Customer agrees not to include the Product in an online
commercially available terminal service established to offer service to
users who are not a part of the Customer's organization. However, the
customer may use the product as a part of an online service offered
wholly for the use of the Customer's employees.
----------------------------------------
The beginning of the document defines Product as "Hershey's
Contribution to Computer Typesetting, Order Number PB-263 925" in a
machine-readable form. Now, what does including "the Product in an
online commercially available terminal service" mean? Can I, for
example, rasterize the vectors and include those rasters in a program?
Can I, for another example, convert some of the characters to some
intermediate (and rather different) vector format for later use by a
program that draws characters on a Silicon Graphics IRIS, and then
distribute the converted form?
I obviously cannot give someone else a copy of the contents of the
tape. That is explicitly forbidden. But I find this next bit of the
agreement VERY interesting:
----------------------------------------
VIII. Effective Date and Duration
A. The effective date of this Agreement shall be the date of
acceptance by NTIS, as indicated below.
B. This Agreement shall expire five years after its effective
date. On expiration, Customer shall be free to copy, sell or otherwise
distribute the Product without liability to NTIS.
----------------------------------------
This means that we (Rice University) will be able to freely copy and
distribute the contents of the tape in the summer of 1988. What's the
use?
Sorry to have misled everyone on this, but it really looks like the
Hershey fonts aren't as public domain as I thought. Anyone have any
further thoughts?
William LeFebvre
Department of Computer Science
Rice University
<phil@Rice.arpa>laser-lovers@uw-beaver (04/17/85)
From: DonWinter.pasa@Xerox.ARPA The fonts may well be in the Public Domain -- if you're willing to type in the data from a hardcopy. What is being protected is the electronic means of distribution. NTIS is required to recover its costs of acquisition, storage, and distribution. It can't do that if it sells one copy to you, and you use your budget (however invisibly) to make copies for others, who make copies for others, who . . . The TEXT of Shakespeare's plays has been public domain for over three-hundred years, but if I assemble a new collection of First Folio pages, the result is emphatically NOT in the public domain, since the COLLECTION comprises a new work. In summation, it is likely that it is the contents of the TAPE which are covered by that agreement, not the fonts themselves.
laser-lovers@uw-beaver (04/18/85)
From: ihnp4!sdcrdcf!RDCF.SDC.UUCP!darrelj@uw-beaver.arpa (Darrel VanBuer)
In looking at the paper (actually, my copy is microfiche) of PB-251 845,
NBS-SP-424, "AContributin to Computer Typesetting Techniques: Tables of
Coordinates for Hershey's, ...", it carries NO copyright notice, so the
fonts can clearly be used freely if you're willing to type in the 1377 sets
of coordinate lists. I suspect that the tape restriction is to protect NTIS
sales, or is a blanket tape restriction ignoring any proprietary interest
which may apply to some tapes.
Since the tape and document, you may also be able to find someone who has
already had the tape for 5 years, and thus is free of the restriction, or
you could release a program which deals with a tape others get direct from
NTIS or you build a derivative file (e.g. prescanned rasters) which you
distribute.
Darrel J. Van Buer, PhD
System Development Corp.
2500 Colorado Ave
Santa Monica, CA 90406
(213)820-4111 x5449
...{allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,orstcs,sdcsvax,ucla-cs,akgua}
!sdcrdcf!darrelj
VANBUER@USC-ECL.ARPAlaser-lovers@uw-beaver (04/19/85)
From: trwrb!trwspp!spp3!urban@Berkeley (Mike Urban)
Unless I'm mistaken, a machine-readable version of the
Hershey fonts went out on one of the Usenix tapes ('82?)
with some software from the University of Colorado such
as LEROY and a plot(5) driver for the Versatec that
used the Hershey fonts to do lettering. Seems we
have a copy buried around here somewhere.
Mikelaser-lovers@uw-beaver (04/25/85)
From: ihnp4!noao!terak!suze@uw-beaver.arpa (Suzanne Barnett) > From: ihnp4!sdcrdcf!RDCF.SDC.UUCP!darrelj@uw-beaver.arpa (Darrel VanBuer) > > In looking at the paper (actually, my copy is microfiche) of PB-251 845, > NBS-SP-424, "AContributin to Computer Typesetting Techniques: Tables of > Coordinates for Hershey's, ...", it carries NO copyright notice, so the > fonts can clearly be used freely if you're willing to type in the 1377 sets You'd better check your copyright law again! And I quote from _Circular_R1,_Copyright_Basics_, published by the copyright office, November 1982. Under present law, copyright is secured AUTOMATICALLY when the work is created, and the work is "created" when it is fixed in a copy ... for the first time. ... registration is not a requirement for protection... (Registration and a notice USED to be a requirement, but it no longer is.) This has no bearing on whether or not the Hershey fonts are public domain or not; only to say that you can't tell from the lack of a notice that they ARE public domain.
laser-lovers@uw-beaver (04/29/85)
From: tektronix!hp-pcd!hplabs!sdcrdcf!rdcf.sdc.uucp!darrelj@uw-beaver.arpa
To clarify on the lack of Hershey copyright: it was published in April 1976.
At that time it was necessary to assert copyright on published versions
for it to be retained. Both the NBS report itself and NTIS are publications
within the (old) law. There are NO notices. Further, the tone of the
forward is that of scientists freely diseminating useful discoveries.
Registration is not particularly an issue, even under the old law it was
possible to have copyright without it, just a harder time in court.
Darrel J. Van Buer, PhD
System Development Corp.
2500 Colorado Ave
Santa Monica, CA 90406
(213)820-4111 x5449
...{allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,orstcs,sdcsvax,ucla-cs,akgua}
!sdcrdcf!darrelj
VANBUER@USC-ECL.ARPA
[[Editor's note: I've seen similar copyright-related discussions on a
number of other groups and so I believe the issues here have been well
hashed over already. I will not forward additional messages
concerning this to the list unless they are particularly comprehensive
or in some other way of general use (i.e., if, for example, a
copyright lawyer were to submit a message, I'd probably forward it).
I believe that the copyright law is probably not applicable in this
instance, anyway, as Hershey's work was done for a U.S. Government
agency and in most such cases, I believe, policy is that the the work
is not copyrighted. --Rick ]]