jcmorris@mitre-bedford.ARPA (Joseph C. Morris) (03/19/88)
In article <235400006@prism> john@prism.TMC.COM writes: > Any program that JUST has a copyright >message, and says nothing about being ok to distribute on a not-for-profit >basis, (or whatever) is NOT public domain, True. As many other posters have noted, copyright and public domain status are mutually exclusive. Once the copyright is abandoned by its owner, however, the presence of a copyright message is irrelevent since there is no force of law behind it. In the absence of other information, a copyright message should be assumed to indicate a valid copyright (that's called CYA mode). > and only the copyright owner has the >right to make copies of it. If you are not that copyright owner, it is illegal >for you to copy and publicly distribute it. No way. The copyright says that the owner has the legal authority to control the copying; such control can include granting free authority to copy a program. The best-known example of this is KERMIT, which is copyrighted by Columbia University. Columbia places no restrictions on the the free (or for-reproduction-costs) redistribution of the code, with or without modifications. Another example is MINIX (UNIX for a PC) which is copyrighted by Prentiss-Hall, but which allows "limited" copying of the entire system (including source code). The example of a book's copyright isn't completely valid since few publications include copyrighted material with simultaneous redistribution authority. An exception to this is PC Magazine, which permits non-commercial (including BBS) redistribution of the utility programs it publishes. Many (but far from all) freeware/shareware programs include explicit text describing the conditions under which the code may be redistributed. Many more, though, include the copyright notice but don't say in the program that they can be redistributed. Unless we take the "safe sex" approach of not touching a program with a copyright message (even if we have good justification for believing that distribution is permitted), there will be cases in which copyrighted material will appear on the net. While I sympathize with the owners of such material, I don't think that banning all copyrighted material from the net would be justified. Joe Morris