Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: The GNU Public License
Message-ID: <3928@looking.on.ca>
Date: 3 Aug 89 21:37:16 GMT
References: <993@rex.cs.tulane.edu>
Reply-To: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 27
Class: discussion

Two items of note:

	One can control "use" of software through copyright because
	almost all use of software involves copying it.

	Yes, copying from a disk drive into memory is copying the
	software.  One might even argue that copying from the memory
	into cache or the CPU involves copying.

	Of course if you buy a program, you get the right to do
	this sort of copying, but they *can* restrict it, I suspect,
	to copying for the purpose of execution.  I don't know if there's
	ever been a case on that.


In the other direction:

	If copyright is to truly reside in the human-perceivable aspects
	of a work, then the "look and feel" is actually the more truly
	copyrightable aspect of a work, since it's what humans see.

	For humans to see the actual code, they need not just a computer,
	but tools to take the code apart and present it in a form humans
	can deal with.

-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd.  --  Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473