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From: jimb@amdcad.UUCP (Jim Budler)
Newsgroups: net.sources,net.legal
Subject: Re: copyright notice
Message-ID: <8395@amdcad.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 17-Jan-86 13:58:45 EST
Article-I.D.: amdcad.8395
Posted: Fri Jan 17 13:58:45 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 19-Jan-86 03:41:53 EST
References: <5600@cca.UUCP>
Reply-To: jimb@amdcad.UUCP (Jim Budler)
Distribution: net
Organization: AMD, Sunnyvale, California
Lines: 33
Xref: watmath net.sources:4147 net.legal:2729

In article <5600@cca.UUCP> dee@cca.UUCP (Donald Eastlake) writes:
>
>Sounds like nonsense to me.  If something is in the public domain, I
>can do more or less anything with it, including making copies of it
>with my copyright notice.  I can then stop anyone from copying my
>copies, although they can, of course, still make copies of the public

Now that's nonsense.  The copyright law, like the patent law does not
allow one to copyright or patent anything in the public domain.  The fact that
you can physically insert your notice into something reflects the
portion of the copyright law which allows you to copyright your
changes to a public domain object.

Thus assuming you have obtained a public domain object such as source code
of a utility, and you are able to modify this and redistribute your 
modified source with your copyright notice in it.

Now I come along and receive your distributed source. I am able to determine
your modifications (perhaps I've always had a printed listing, but didn't 
want to type a lot) and remove them. I may then make my own modifications
to the source code and redistribute it. And you can do nothing about it.

An object, once in public domain, is always in public domain.

Also, the other side of this is that if you modify a copyrighted object
you may copyright your modifications, but you still cannot distribute
the results without the approval of the original copyright holder.
-- 
 Jim Budler
 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
 (408) 749-5806
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