larry@kitty.UUCP (03/01/87)
In article <8332@decwrl.DEC.COM>, reid@decwrl.DEC.COM (Brian Reid) writes: > >>I can appreciate the use of a copyright to keep netnews freely available; > >>however, there is already precedent for this with the mod.sources cookbook, > >>which is copyrighted by the USENET Community Trust. > > >...which I think is a fabrication. There is NO legal entity either named, > >or doing business as, the USENET Community Trust, is there? > > The USENET Community Trust is a registered DBA in Santa Clara County > California, proprietor Brian K. Reid (that's me). I spent $70 of my own money > getting it set up. It exists solely for the purpose of holding the copyright, > of course, and does not do any business, but as you point out, if the > organization does not exist the copyright is worthless. I can appreciate the efforts of Mr. Reid in trying to make the "USENET Community Trust" a legal entity; however, he took an action whose legal significance may be different from what he intended. As Brian K. Reid d/b/a USENET Community Trust, Mr. Reid _owns_ the USENET Community Trust, (at least in Santa Clara County, CA) and therefore _owns_ the copyright of any software which he distributes under his assumed name. From a legal standpoint, this situation is no different than having a copyright under his own name. And this is analogous to the personal copyright by Rick Adams, which started this whole "tempest in a teapot". For all intents and purposes, any attempted enforcement of any copyright of Usenet news software, whether claimed by Rick Adams, Brian Reid, or Brian Reid d/b/a USENET Community Trust is impracticable. Mr. Reid has spent $ 70.00 for his d/b/a to protect what _should_ be public domain software from exploitation. However, to even _begin_ to _enforce_ his intention will likely cost about 100 times that figure in attorney costs! Copyrights (and patents, for that matter) "sound" nice on the surface - until one gets in the real world to enforce them. As an example, I hold a number of patents; of them, three British patents (GB2032665B, GB2112189B, and GB2111277B) and a U.S. patent (4,408,291) are being blatantly infringed upon at this moment. What am *I* going to do about that? Nothing, for the forseeable future. I have licensed these patents to a a Fortune 500 corporation who has far more money that I do; what is this corporation going to do? Nothing, for the moment, because an enforcement action is not yet cost-effective and may _never_ be cost-effective... Please bear in mind that I am neither putting down nor flaming either Brian Reid or Rick Adams; I believe they did what they genuinely felt was in the best interests of the USENET community. However, I feel that any effort expended in making any copyright attempt for this purpose is wasted. <> Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, New York <> UUCP: {allegra|ames|boulder|decvax|rocksanne|watmath}!sunybcs!kitty!larry <> VOICE: 716/688-1231 {hplabs|ihnp4|mtune|seismo|utzoo}!/ <> FAX: 716/741-9635 {G1,G2,G3 modes} "Have you hugged your cat today?"
reid@decwrl.UUCP (03/01/87)
In article <1625@kitty.UUCP> larry@kitty.UUCP (Larry Lippman) writes: > I can appreciate the efforts of Mr. Reid in trying to make the >"USENET Community Trust" a legal entity; however, he took an action whose >legal significance may be different from what he intended. > > As Brian K. Reid d/b/a USENET Community Trust, Mr. Reid _owns_ the >USENET Community Trust, (at least in Santa Clara County, CA) and therefore >_owns_ the copyright of any software which he distributes under his assumed >name. From a legal standpoint, this situation is no different than having >a copyright under his own name. > For all intents and purposes, any attempted enforcement of any >copyright of Usenet news software, whether claimed by Rick Adams, Brian >Reid, or Brian Reid d/b/a USENET Community Trust is impracticable. Mr. Reid >has spent $ 70.00 for his d/b/a to protect what _should_ be public domain >software from exploitation. However, to even _begin_ to _enforce_ his >intention will likely cost about 100 times that figure in attorney costs! You must have lived in New York for too long. First, let me point out that the legal significance of what I did is exactly what I intended. I am quite familiar with the theory and practice of copyright law, and so is my lawyer. I am also quite familiar with the realities of copyright in the U.S. right now. Finally, let me point out that having a copyright in the name of a DBA is not the same as having it in my own name, because I can sell the DBA and its assets to some worthy organization (e.g. Usenix) without having to muck with the copyright. If the copyright were in my own name I could not do that. (It's late at night right now and I can't ask my lawyer for nitty-gritty facts about what happens when you sell a copyright or sell an organization owning a copyright, but he explained it all to me once.) A copyright is a mechanism somewhat like the yellow line down the middle of the road. It has legal status, but does not enforce anything. If somebody swerves across the yellow line he can crash into my car; the yellow line doesn't enforce the law--the police do. In most states it is just as illegal to swerve across the road if the yellow line is missing; the yellow line serves as a reminder. Similarly, the copyright doesn't enforce anything, and violation of copyright isn't even a crime (so you can't call the police to enforce it for you). A copyright is just a license to sue. It isn't even a guarantee that you will win the suit, but posession of a valid copyright significantly strengthens your case. I started copyrighting the mod.recipes material when I learned of a project to publish a commercial cookbook from the material. The moment the copyright notices started appearing, the publisher backed out. There is honor among thieves, and there is mutual respect for copyright among publishers. If some slimebucket publisher decided to ignore my copyright and steal all the material, of course I couldn't stop him. If some drunken teenager decided to ignore the yellow line and swerve into my lane, I couldn't stop him either. But in both cases the system works because the majority of the participants are willing to obey the law whenever they remember to obey it. The copyright notice serves as a reminder that the material is copyrighted, not as an enforcement mechanism to prevent it from being stolen. People violate copyright with their xerox machines and their cassette decks every day of the week. Besides my USENET activity and my regular job, I also am the owner of a record label (Woodpecker Records). We manufacture and sell record albums, cassettes, and (soon) CD's. There's really nothing I can do to prevent you from making a copy of one of my albums and sending the copy to your sister, but the copyright-like legal protections on my albums will prevent MCA from making and selling an album with copies of my company's material on it. That's all I really care about. The reason it will prevent MCA from making copies is not that I will need to sue MCA, but that MCA will not knowingly violate a copyright lest somebody use that action as precedent and violate one of theirs. It's sound business practice. If you believe that the world consists entirely of criminals, then you are right: I can't enforce anything with my copyrights. But if you believe that the people in the world who are likely to want to publish my copyrighted material are more likely than not to obey the copyright law, then my copyright is useful. The example of patents is somewhat of a red herring, for reasons that I don't want to delve into in this posting because it's getting too long already. Copyrights are not the same as patents; the laws are different, the rewards for infringing them are different, and the nature of an infringement suit is different.
jay@imagen.UUCP (03/03/87)
In article <1625@kitty.UUCP>, larry@kitty.UUCP (Larry Lippman) writes:
-> [ Summary: Brian Reid, d/b/a mumble mumble, is wasting his time and
-> money copyrighting USENET sofware for the good of the USENET
-> community, since it's prohibitively troublesome and expensive to
-> take legal action to protect one's copyrights anyway . . . -- j.j. ]
-> . . .
->
-> Please bear in mind that I am neither putting down nor flaming
-> either Brian Reid or Rick Adams; I believe they did what they genuinely felt
-> was in the best interests of the USENET community. However, I feel that any
-> effort expended in making any copyright attempt for this purpose is wasted.
But doesn't the existence of this copyright preclude any big greedy commercial
software vendor from plagiarizing the code and selling it under its own
copyright and enforcing that copyright, which might otherwise happen if Brian
hadn't created the above-discussed copyright? I wonder if maybe that is
what Brian had in mind?
(The point is, Big Greedy Company could plagiarize if Brian can't afford
to protect his rights -- but this way, if Big Greedy Company tried to enforce
_its_ claimed copyright, it wouldn't have a leg to stand on.)
--
-- From the alternate universe . . . -- Jay
...{sun,decwrl,ucbvax}!imagen!jay