davidbrierley@lynx.northeastern.edu (02/24/90)
[Ed. A number (!) of people sent in other contributions to the ongoing
discussion debating whether or not the AIDS Trojan was a copy
protection scheme. While each and every one of these raised valid
concerns, in the interest of reducing net volume, I've not included
them all in this digest (bulk posting for you Usenet readers...). If
anyone feels strongly against this, just let me know. I'll gladly
continue posting related messages if it is felt that there are further
points to be raised.]
I have read (and heartily recommend) the third edition of _How to
Copyright Software_ by attorney M.J. Salone and would like to post a
few points from it:
1) The United States is a member of the Berne Convention as of March
1, 1989; which means that works published on or after that date do not
need a copyight notice (Copyright 1990 John Doe) in order to be
entitled to copyright protection. A notice is required to be included
in works published before that date or else they will lose protection
unless:
a) Only a relatively small number of copies of the work exist without the
notice. This, of course, will not be the case with viruses since they
are designed specifically to replicate themselves.
OR
b) The copyright is registered with a copyright office within five years of
publication AND the notice is included in copies that are not yet in the
hands of the public. A virus author isn't likely to register, even if
a pseudonym is listed in the copyright notice, since the author's real
name is needed in order to actually sue in court for damages. Admitting
in court that he/she wrote a virus and waiving a copy of the registration
around will be all the evidence needed to convict the author of breaking
the law. (Since the confession was made during a civil suit filed by the
author I don't think "self-incrimination" regulations would protect the
author.)
OR
c) The author licensed or authorized another party to handle the work and the
notice was not included due to the negligence of that party, unless the
author did not specifically require the party to include the copyright
notice. This probably wouldn't apply to virus writers since other parties
could later become witnesses against the author. Most virus writers get
pleasure of creating a virus on their own.
Because of the length involved I will break up my contribution
into a few smaller postings. Next time I'll mention how derivative
works come into play; this relates to cases where a person copyrights
a disassembly of a virus written by someone else.
DISCLAIMER: The above interpretations are mine - I'm not a lawyer! Please
do not take this posting to be complete truth!davidbrierley@lynx.northeastern.edu (03/01/90)
This is to continue my earlier posting on copyrights and viruses,
based upon _How to Copyright Software_ by M.J. Salone. This posting
is in regards to derivative works; for example, a disassembly of a
virus made by someone other than the virus author.
Congress defines the term 'derivative work'as "a work based upon
one or more pre-existing works." [17 USC Sec. 101] A virus disassembly
would probably fall under this definition because the opcodes are
presumably from the actual virus even though the descriptive comments
are the creative input of the person disassembling it. The above
definition is likely to apply if a disassembly is considered to be a
translation of the virus. The question then becomes "Is the
disassembly author required to get the permission of the person who
holds the copyright (usually the author) before publishing the
disassembly?" The answer is, technically, yes.
However, the absence of a copyright notice could be a legitimate
excuse for assuming that the virus is public domain; this is backed up
by the fact that viruses are designed to replicate themselves without
consent of the user. Items within the public domain are free to be
used and distributed in any way. Derivative works of public domain
items can be copyrighted as long as the new material is substantial
enough to be considered original. As far as disassemblies are
concerned, the aforementioned descriptive comments are original
material and can thus be copyrighted (i.e. the whole disassembly).
Of course there is the question of whether-or-not a virus is
considered to be properly copyrightable anyway, as other contributors
to Virus-L have noted. Viruses install themselves into other
programs, thus creating aunauthorized derivative works in the process!
Please note that, if the above is untrue, then the disassembly
can not be published without the consent of the virus' copyright
holder. The copyright holder of a work solely has the right to
publish derivative works based upon his/her original publication
during the duration of the copyright.
In my opinion the disassembly is copyrightable because the virus
is in the public domain (since copyright notices are not normally
found in viruses; not to mention that viruses may themselves be
somewhat illegal). I I doubt that a virus author would sue for
infringement because, as I said in my previous posting, that the virus
author is likely to incrimminate himself by doing so.
[Ed. For what it's worth, I believe that some versions of the Brain
virus included a copyright notice in the ASCII header.]
My next posting will contain a discussion on what rights are
protected by a copyright.
DISCLAIMER: The above are my opinions. I'm not a lawyer :-) Please do
not take this material to be the law.ZDEE699@ELM.CC.KCL.AC.UK (Olivier Crepin-Leblond) (03/02/90)
In VIRUS-L V3.51 the moderator (K. Van Wyk) writes in an article by David Brierley <davidbrierley@lynx.northeastern.edu>: >Subject: Viruses and Copyyrights (Part 2) > >[Ed. For what it's worth, I believe that some versions of the Brain >virus included a copyright notice in the ASCII header.] The Brain virus was written by Mohammed Farooq Alvi in Lahore (Pakistan) and was used initially to protect their own software from being pirated. The Alvi brothers sold "bad" copies of their programs to Americans who then had to pay an additional amount of money to get the program they bought to work. That's probably why there was a copyright notice included in the header. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ |Olivier M.J. Crepin-Leblond, Comp. Sys. & Elec. Eng | On this computer, | |Electrical & Electronic Eng, King's College London, UK | a flame-proof | |BITNET : <zdee699%elm.cc.kcl.ac.uk@ukacrl> | shield, is an | |INTERNET: <zdee699%elm.cc.kcl.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk>| expensive gadget... | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
CHESS@YKTVMV.BITNET (David.M.Chess) (03/05/90)
Olivier Crepin-Leblond <ZDEE699@ELM.CC.KCL.AC.UK> writes: > The Brain virus was written by Mohammed Farooq Alvi in Lahore > (Pakistan) and was used initially to protect their own software from > being pirated. This is a myth, I think. I can't think of any feature of the virus that would help protect software from being pirated. Viruses are basically irrelevant to copy-protection. DC