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From: dee@cca.UUCP (Donald Eastlake)
Newsgroups: net.legal
Subject: Re: copyright notice
Message-ID: <5820@cca.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 24-Jan-86 15:45:33 EST
Article-I.D.: cca.5820
Posted: Fri Jan 24 15:45:33 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 26-Jan-86 04:06:49 EST
References: <5600@cca.UUCP> <> <5738@cca.UUCP> <>
Reply-To: dee@cca.UUCP (Donald Eastlake)
Distribution: net
Organization: Computer Corp. of America, Cambridge
Lines: 42

In article <> tim@ism780c.UUCP (Tim Smith) writes:
>In article <5738@cca.UUCP> dee@cca.UUCP (Donald Eastlake) writes:
>>
>>>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.
>>
>>At last, somethig I can agree with.  (Well, not quite.  Actually you can
>>distribute it if you don't copy it.  That is, if you buy a fresh copy
>>from the original copyrightholder each time, you can then modify and
>>sell that copy, barring some contractual agreement to the contrary.)
>
>I think you are wrong here.  ...  To distribute
>the modified version, you must have the copyright holders permission.
>
>If this were not the case, you would see people selling uncopy-protected
>versions of all the various copy-protected software.  What you actually
>see are people selling programs that make the modifications.  The end
>user then buys the original, and makes the modifications himself, and
>thus hopefully has not violated any copyright.
>
Nope.  If there is some $500 piece of copy-protected software and you
know how to unprotect it, you have a much higher profit margin selling
your program rather than laying out loads of money for copies of the
protected software (even at wholesale) and re-selling them after
modification.  Besides, that may run into problems with shrink-wrap
contracts, legal or other harassment from the original manufacturer of
the protected software, etc.  And what if under some circumstances,
the fomerly protected software screws up due to the modifications?
Do you want to be in the middle of such hassles?  So much easier just to
sell your zap program which is a common and accepted thing to do these
days.  An in any case, the un-copy-protecting
software will probably work on multiple things (or at least will with a
table of parameters in it) so you have a wider market selling it
directly.

Of course you can't modify it so as to put the resulting modified work
into the public domain.  (I.E., it would be a good idea to retain the
original copyright notice as well as possibly adding one of your own.)
-- 
	+1 617-492-8860		Donald E. Eastlake, III
	ARPA:  dee@CCA-UNIX	usenet:	{decvax,linus}!cca!dee