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From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: A lot of stuff that's been happening lately
Message-ID: <9008291902.AA20778@world.std.com>
Date: 29 Aug 90 19:02:51 GMT
References: <1990Aug29.031131.14922@looking.on.ca>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
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>You say a dark prediciton, Barry, but weren't you recently arguing that it
>was about time that the standards of warranty and liability from other
>industries started showing up in software?

Well, my talk on this group tends to be more speculative than that.

What I did say was

    *IF* the software vendors want all rights and privileges extended to
    other products (e.g. copyrights, patents, etc)

    *THEN* they surely should be held to the same standards of warranty
    and liability of other products.

My actual suspicion is that some compromise is in order and we need to
recognize the "frontier" quality and inherent differences of software
and other more tangible products.

>In Richard Stallman's world of no intellectual property, where
>programmers are paid only for custom work, I would guess that much of the
>free software generated would be generated to drum up such work.

I don't think Richard's position is "no intellectual property", I
think that's an extreme interpretation of what I'll admit is a
somewhat confusing position.

FSF certainly uses the copyright laws to assert ownership of their
software, for example.

Their claims may be a bit non-standard, but they certainly believe the
copyright laws give validity to those claims, GNU software is *their*
intellectual property, even if they choose to give that property away.

As an analogy, a book I write is my intellectual property, even if I
publish it. I can choose to let you copy it, that's very common in the
paper publishing business (I think all ACM SIG journals basically say
"you can copy this all you want, just give us credit", check me on
that I may be confusing another org's pubs.)

A problem arises when someone copyrights something they have no
intention of publishing, but wants the copyright laws to protect them.

That, some would claim, is a very strange use or abuse of copyright
laws. It might be normal behavior under trade secret laws, *BUT* trade
secret laws do not provide them with the type of protection they seek,
which is why the software vendors don't use them!

For starters, trade secret laws demand vigorous attempts to maintain
the property in question as a secret, the coca-cola formula is the
classic [ahem] example. In fact, there isn't a lot to trade secret
laws because of its strict requirements. Suits are generally limited
to former employees with bona fide access to the "secret", or a real
thief (someone breaks into your safe and steals the secret.) Any other
access is generally construed as prima facie evidence of carelessness
on your part, and the burden switches heavily to the damaged party.

Patents are an entirely different dimension since the patent office of
course demands a public filing of all claims and a description of the
technology sufficient for someone "skilled in the art" to fully
understand those claims. E.g., I should be able to re-implement LZW
from their public patent claim.

Now it gets interesting....

In order to file a proper U.S. copyright one has to submit two copies
of the material being copyrighted to the U.S. Copyright Office. Those
copies are entered into the Library of Congress.

A question: Can I go to the Library of Congress and find full source
code listings of every program which claims a proper copyright?

I don't think so, something is amiss.

CLARIFICATION: By a "proper" copyright I mean one filed with the U.S.
Copyright Office (again, using the U.S. as an example, please no
flames about how there are other countries also!)

One can have a somewhat limited copyright by, well, by not doing
anything. Under the Berne Conventions one doesn't even have to write
their copyright notice on the material, although it's strongly advised
to avoid "ignorance of the fact" defenses which are quite legal in
this country.

But if you copyright like that, without formal filing, you are limited
legally to *only* cease and desist suits. NO MONETARY DAMAGES CAN BE
COLLECTED IF THE COPYRIGHT WAS NEVER FILED PROPERLY. I can provide
references on that if anyone doubts it.

Back to the issue at hand...

>If a doctor performs an operation as a charity case, they can still get
>sued for malpractice, I think.   This is nothing new.

Agreed, although now we immediately sink into the whole "Good
Samaritan" issues which affords doctors in such cases quite a bit of
protection although it's been weakened lately (quite unfortunately.)

Meaning, it's not simple, there's lots of if's, and's and but's.

        -Barry Shein

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