Xref: utzoo alt.sources.d:1711 misc.legal:25439 Newsgroups: alt.sources.d,misc.legal Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!mintaka!bloom-picayune.mit.edu!athena.mit.edu!jik From: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) Subject: Re: Xhash - choke cough gasp wheeze In-Reply-To: dev@ei.ecn.purdue.edu's message of 22 Apr 91 06:39:01 GMT Message-ID: Followup-To: misc.legal Sender: news@athena.mit.edu (News system) Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology References: <1991Apr21.154623.9736@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu> <1991Apr22.063901.20792@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> Date: Mon, 22 Apr 91 07:03:07 GMT Lines: 38 (Note the cross-post and Followup-To. If we're going to discuss copyrights yet again, then misc.legal is the right place to do it, not alt.sources.d. The people in the misc.legal newsgroup are probably, on the average, more capable of speaking on this issue from the point of view of someone who actually knows the laws.) In article <1991Apr22.063901.20792@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> dev@ei.ecn.purdue.edu (Larry Weeks) writes: Actually, isn't all code automatically copyrighted, under the latest revisions to the Federal copyright lows? Please remember that Federal copyright laws are not the whole show. International copyright law also needs to be taken into consideration in some situations. I believe that in the case of "(C)" vs. "Copyright" or "c-in-a-circle" is one such situation -- if I recall correctly from the last time this was discussed, (C) is enough to ensure copyright in the USA, but not enough to ensure it under International copyright law. I was under the impression that unless you implicitly place it in the public domain, you have a legal case for ownership should you wish to pursue it... There are situations where you implicitly grant the right to freely redistribute, and you can't then go back and later ask people to pay for what they got while the code was freely redistributable. For example, if you post code to the Usenet, with no copyright notice, you are almost certainly not going to be able to win if you ever decide that the code was copyrighted and try to collect on it. A case where you put a copyright notice in, but the copyright notice is invalid (e.g. no "Copyright" or "c-i-a-circle"), is less clear, but there is still some room for you to lose if you ever go to court. Jonathan Kamens USnail: MIT Project Athena 11 Ashford Terrace jik@Athena.MIT.EDU Allston, MA 02134 Office: 617-253-8085 Home: 617-782-0710