barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin) (05/22/89)
In article <31529@bu-cs.BU.EDU> bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes: >Actually, although humorous, I wonder about the legal implications of >that /bin/true which contains nothing but a copyright notice (and >perhaps one blank line.) > >One could make an argument that AT&T ran around blindly copyrighting >everything in sight without being bothered to so much as inventory its >copyright value or verify that there were any contents to which their >copyrights could lay claim to or be properly assigned. [lots of stuff deleted] >I would be interested in any case law which dealt with frivolous use >of the copyright law who's only purpose was to restrain trade rather >than protect a creative work (eg. someone trying to copyright a blank >book and lay claim to the concept of a blank book, as opposed to the >design of a particular blank book.) I'm not a lawyer (but I play one on the net)... There are several misconceptions about copyright evidenced here. First of all, copyright doesn't protect concepts, it only protects the expression of a concept; patents exist to protect concepts themselves. The big difference between the two protection mechanisms can be shown in the case of independent invention: if you patent something, and I then develop something identical without knowing about your version, I would violate your patent if I were to sell mine; if you and I both write identical poems independently, we both have rights to our versions -- you have to intentionally COPY something to violate a copyright. The second misconception is that you have to assign a value to something in order to copyright it. First, you don't have to do ANYTHING to copyright something; by default, the author of a creative work is the copyright holder. Affixing a copyright notice and registering the work with the Copyright Office are formalities that are generally necessary in order to win a potential copyright infringement case, but they are not officially necessary (I think it's sort of similar to the need for a written contract -- it's hard to prove that someone has violated a verbal contract when there are no impartial witnesses). So, an author automatically holds the copyright on something he writes. If he's smart, he automatically stamps it with his notice in order to let others know that he holds the rights. There's no requirement that he actually think about this, since the copyright notice is simply asserting an existing fact, not that he actually CARES. The way the courts generally decide whether you care is based on whether you've taken additionally steps to protect your rights. For instance, if you know that someone has copied a piece and don't try to stop them, then you may lose your rights to THAT piece. Barry Margolin Thinking Machines Corp. barmar@think.com {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar
ka@june.cs.washington.edu (Kenneth Almquist) (05/24/89)
It's about time that someone pointed out that the System V "true" program is not the empty file. The System V "true" program contains a copyright notice. An empty file can't contain a copyright or anything else. AT&T could claim that an empty file infringed on its copyright of /bin/true by asserting that the empty file was a derived work, but since the process of converting the System V true program to the empty file involves deleting every single line of text from the System V true program, I expect that a court would rule that the empty file does not contain any points of similarity to the AT&T true program, even if AT&T could prove that the empty file was constructed using the command sed '1,$d' /bin/true > empty Kenneth Almquist
dsill@relay.nswc.navy.mil (05/25/89)
>From: Kenneth Almquist <ka@june.cs.washington.edu> >AT&T could claim that an empty file infringed on its copyright of /bin/true >by asserting that the empty file was a derived work, but since the process >of converting the System V true program to the empty file involves deleting >every single line of text from the System V true program, I expect that a >court would rule that the empty file does not contain any points of >similarity to the AT&T true program, even if AT&T could prove that the >empty file was constructed using the command > > sed '1,$d' /bin/true > empty Ah, but an empty file and AT&T's `true' *are* similar in that they both contain no executable statements. If the empty file is also executable, then they have even more in common. And if it happens to have the same name or performs the same function, then maybe they *do* have something in common. The saving grace, though, is that a judge is very unlikely to decide that the implementation of `true' is an innovation, and not an obvious, natural outcome of the shell environment. And AT&T wouldn't have to prove that the empty file was created by manually manipulating their copyrighted work; that's just not the way copyright law works. -Dave (dsill@relay.swc.navy.mil)
gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn) (05/26/89)
In article <8335@june.cs.washington.edu> ka@june.cs.washington.edu (Kenneth Almquist) writes: >It's about time that someone pointed out that the System V "true" program >is not the empty file. It was before AT&T went around adding bogus Copyright notices to everything.
hitz@auspex.auspex.com (Dave Hitz) (05/27/89)
In article <10321@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes: >In article <8335@june.cs.washington.edu> ka@june.cs.washington.edu (Kenneth Almquist) writes: >>It's about time that someone pointed out that the System V "true" program >>is not the empty file. >It was before AT&T went around adding bogus Copyright notices to everything. Yes, but then there wasn't a copyright notice in it. -- Dave Hitz home: 408-739-7116 UUCP: {uunet,mips,sun,bridge2}!auspex!hitz play: 408-970-8970
pokey@well.UUCP (Jef Poskanzer) (05/28/89)
In the referenced message, hitz@auspex.auspex.com (Dave Hitz) wrote: }In article <10321@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes: }>In article <8335@june.cs.washington.edu> ka@june.cs.washington.edu (Kenneth Almquist) writes: }>>It's about time that someone pointed out that the System V "true" program }>>is not the empty file. }>It was before AT&T went around adding bogus Copyright notices to everything. }Yes, but then there wasn't a copyright notice in it. Look guys, it doesn't have to make sense. It's the LAW. --- Jef Jef Poskanzer {ucbvax, lll-crg, sun!pacbell, apple, hplabs}!well!pokey "What we've got here is a failure to communicate."