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From: dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady)
Newsgroups: net.micro.apple
Subject: Re: Piracy and copyrights
Message-ID: <960@ecsvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 4-Apr-85 11:43:48 EST
Article-I.D.: ecsvax.960
Posted: Thu Apr  4 11:43:48 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 6-Apr-85 02:23:23 EST
References: <1400@decwrl.UUCP>
Organization: Duke U Comp Ctr
Lines: 45

> ... US laws read that a
> work is copyrighted at the moment of its creation.  It is not, however, pro-
> tected in the eyes of the US courts unless its copyright is registered with
> the Library of Congress.

That ain't the way I heard it.  Registration gets you the right to
punitive damages and so forth, but you can sue over theft of
unregistered material as well.

> ... heck, xeroxing a book is ALWAYS illegal unless
> the person doing it has written permission from the copyright holder.

No, there's something called the "fair use provision" of the law (a
codification of older common law now in the statute) that permits a
reasonable degree of copying.  Copying a part of a book for limited use
is perfectly legal.  The issue is whether enough copying is done so that
sales of the original work are potentially damaged.  Incidentally, about
a year or two ago a major university was hit with (and lost) a
substantial suit from a textbook publisher when it transpired several
faculty members had been actively producing their own texts for courses
by selectivly copying chunks of various anthologies.

An aside:  Not being overly worshipful of physical objects, I've always
thought the notion of property theft misleading, especially in the case
of intellectual property.  If I could easily make a car, it would not
bother me much to have my car stolen.  What bothers me is the work it
takes to replace it.  It is theft of my labor and my time that disturbs
me.

If I work as a programmer and produce a program, someone presumably
pays me for that work.  Suppose I work as a software developer (or, for
that matter, novelist) and create a package for sale.  Each purchaser
can then buy the program at a fraction of what it would cost to hire me
for a custom program.  That should make them happy.  In return, I have
the potential to make a lot of money (if I'm very lucky), and that
should make me happy.  Unfortunately, some people feel they have the
right to give away or steal my work because I still have a copy of it
and hence nothing has been "stolen".  A little thinking should show
that this is irrelevant.  Unfortunately, we're so ingrained to think in
the convenient shorthand of property rights that we don't think.
-- 
D Gary Grady
Duke U Comp Center, Durham, NC  27706
(919) 684-3695
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