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From: drears@ARDEC.ARPA ("1LT Dennis G. Rears", FSAC)
Newsgroups: misc.legal
Subject: Re:  BITNET mail follows (public domain software)
Message-ID: <8610151004.aa03196@SEM.BRL.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 15-Oct-86 08:52:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: SEM.8610151004.aa03196
Posted: Wed Oct 15 08:52:01 1986
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>=Michael C. Berch
>
>
>I believe that many people do not understand the true meaning of
>"public domain" with respect to intellectual properties. Under US
>copyright law, the creator of an intellectual property is vested with
>a "bundle of exclusive rights" that are defined by the copyright statute. 
>These include, among other things, the right to make and sell copies,
>control derivative works, and the right to license these privileges or
>to assign the rights themselves. This applies to all works subject to
>the copyright law, including literary works, sound recordings, motion
>pictures, and computer software.
>
    Agreed!

>When the creator of a work publishes it with notice of copyright, the
>bundle of exclusive rights is preserved, and he may parcel them out as
>he wishes. But if he publishes it without a copyright notice, or
>states that the work is in the public domain, the bundle of rights is
>irrevocably lost. [Yeah, there are some exceptions to this, but
>they're not important here.] This means that anyone may copy, sell, 
>distribute, or otherwise exploit the work for commercial or personal gain, 
>with just two exceptions:
>

>1) You may not pass off the work as your own. This is based on fraud
>law rather than copyright law.
>
    I not too sure about this.  First I believe civil charges would
be the way to go on this as opposed to criminal fraud charges. On
fraud charges you would have to prove the seller is changing the
name of the author to affect sales therefore commiting fraud upon
the buyer.  There is no fraud commited against the orginal author.

>2) You may not copyright the work in your own name. The copyright law
>provides that only the creator of the work may do so.

     Correct.  However clever persons have been able to print books,
music, and other public domain stuff and a copyright notice inserted
in the front.  What they are doing is copyrighting the format and
not the actual prose.  Joe Average Citizen does not know the
difference nor care.  This is one way of getting around this
restriction.  Actually the law is you can't copyright anything in
the public domain. 
	 I can actually copyright something I did not
create when I obtain the rights from the creator.  The songs of the
Beatles are an example of this.  McCartney and Lennon never
copyrighted their songs it was done by  Northern Songs. Nothern songs
were not assigned the copyrights they created the copyrights.
>
>Thus software authors wishing to retain any control over their
>software after it leaves their hands must assert copyright rather than
>placing their work in the public domain. It is perfectly reasonable to
>place a copyright notice on a work and state that it is freely available;
>it is not reasonable to state that a work is in the public domain and
>attempt to place restrictions on dissemination.

   Agreed.
>
>Michael C. Berch
>ARPA: mcb@lll-tis-b.ARPA (down temporarily)
>UUCP: {ihnp4,dual,sun}!lll-lcc!styx!mcb
>                   ...!lll-crg!styx!mcb


Dennis