Xref: utzoo misc.legal:17161 comp.misc:8709
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!haven!adm!cmcl2!stealth.acf.nyu.edu!brnstnd
From: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu
Newsgroups: misc.legal,comp.misc
Subject: Re: Europe's attempt to copyright interfaces is insane
Message-ID: <4238:Apr1500:57:5390@stealth.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 15 Apr 90 00:57:53 GMT
References: <1093@goofy.UUCP> <2148@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Distribution: usa
Organization: IR
Lines: 20

In article <2148@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> edit@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Film/Video) writes:
>      brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
>      "For thousands of years ideas have been free."
> That may be so, but for hundreds of years inventions have been
>                                           ----------
> patentable.
> ----------

You can't patent a method, whether you invented it or not. You can't
copyright a method. But now, under the proposed copyright law for
Europe, you'll be able to (in effect) copyright methods.

Patents last at most 17 years. Copyrights can last forever, if they're
assigned suitably; in any case they always last at least 50 years, with
an average of more like 100.

In other words, the proposed European copyright law is an obscene
strengthening of what may already be overly strong protections.

---Dan