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From: binder@dosadi.DEC (Wherever you go, there you are.)
Newsgroups: net.micro.apple
Subject: Re: Copyrights and piracy
Message-ID: <1529@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 6-Apr-85 09:16:51 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.1529
Posted: Sat Apr  6 09:16:51 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 7-Apr-85 10:26:34 EST
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Organization: DEC Engineering Network
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In response to Gary Grady:

>> ... 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.

True, you can indeed sue.  Convincing a court that an unregistered work was
originally yours is the difficult part, unless you can produce credible
disinterested witnesses who will depose that they saw it with your name on it
BEFORE THE DEFENDANT COULD >POSSIBLY< HAVE PRODUCED HIS OR HER FIRST COPY. 
And that's tough, unless one of your witnesses is the defendant's roommate or
a close co-worker!  Hence, unregistered works are not really protected.  The
instruction pamphlet that the Registrar of Copyrights supplies to those
intending to register makes it clear that the whole point of registration is
to provide you with just the proof you might need in court. 

>> ... 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.

Not necessarily.  It is usually tolerated because enforcement of the copyright 
protection is not possible, but take a moment to read the notices in a couple 
of books - here's a fairly standard one:

                      Copyright 1985 by ...

            All rights reserved.  No portion of this work may be re-
            produced  or  represented in any form, including but not
            limited to optical, mechanical, electronic, or  magnetic
            copying,  storage,  or  transmission,  without the prior
            written consent of the copyright holder.

Such a statement is crystal clear - you copy my book, even one page, and if I 
find out about it I'll roast you over a slow fire.  Many works include the
provision, "except for brief passages by a reviewer for use in a review", 
which nails it down even tighter by specifying the one permissible incidence
of copying. 

> 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.

Ah, what a wonderful attitude!  :=)  I tell you what:  You find a nice house
that you especially like, perhaps getting a realtor to locate it for you so
that your own time and effort will be minimised.  Then I'll come and live in
it, leaving you to find another.  I'll pay you a fair wage for the time you
spent looking.  I doubt you're ready to agree to such an absurd proposal, but,
after all, you shouldn't care - it's just a piece of physical property. 

> ...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...

The whole premise of intellectual property is just that - though such things 
are intangibles, i.e., how do you weigh the thought required to produce a line 
of code, they are still very real.  They are an actual investment made in 
expectation, or at least hope, of a return.

Cheers,
Dick Binder   (The Stainless Steel Rat)

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Sat 6-Apr-1985 09:10 Eastern Standard Time