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From: jimomura@lsuc.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Atari and BREAKOUT.ACC
Message-ID: <1423@lsuc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 5-Dec-86 23:00:17 EST
Article-I.D.: lsuc.1423
Posted: Fri Dec  5 23:00:17 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 6-Dec-86 03:33:28 EST
References: <8612051455.AA02099@ncsc.ARPA>
Reply-To: jimomura@lsuc.UUCP (Jim Omura)
Organization: Consultant, Toronto
Lines: 58
Summary: (Summary?  Gotta be kidding.)

In article <8612051455.AA02099@ncsc.ARPA> moore@NCSC.ARPA (Moore) writes:
>
>This situation is getting out of hand:  How can you tell if the fantastic new

     (Huh?  Out of hand.  I don't think things are that bad.)

>piece of software you picked up off an RBBS is commercial or public domain?

     Presume it's not public domain unless it says so.  To a certain extent
copyright notice errors in the US can be corrected and in the *rest of the
world* (or at least a substantial enough part of it) copyright notices are
NOT necessary at all.  Check the list of signatories on the Berne Convention.

>You can't, unless you get the source along with it (know what that will do to
>your long distance phone bill???).  And don't give me that line about a copy-
>right notice showing on the screen:  I downloaded a copy of BREAKOUT from some

     It would be nice if programmers learned at least to embed copyright notices
and public domain declarations in the code.

>(I'll never tell) BBS, and there ain't no copyright notice on it!
>
>Regardless of the illegalities involved in posting something that's copyrighted
>even if you don't know that is the case, netters need to keep this in perspec-
>tive:  do you really believe the guy would have posted the thing if he knew it
>was copyrighted?  The *only* reason I haven't posted DB Master One, which I got
>from a "Public Domain" BBS, is because I can't get a straight (or at least,
>consistent) answer on if it is pd or not.
>
>I don't mean the following as a jab at Neil, or anyone else, because I don't
>know whose job it is to police the net (certainly not Neil's), if it is
>anyone's; it should be said, though, that a couple of people (myself included)
>posted *several* queries to the net concerning BREAKOUT, well before BREAKOUT

     Whose job is it to police the Net?  All of us.  Otherwise we can expect
to find real "policing" of the Net.  But hey, I don't read every message on
the Net and I don't even read all the postings in the 'comp.sys.atari.st'
postings.  It's possible that Neil missed it too.  I certainly never read
any of the queries about the status of Breakout.  I found out about it when
I posted a query about its status on BIX.

>itself was posted; wasn't that the time to shout "illegal!", rather than after
>the thing had been posted?
>
>Unfortunately I can't offer any solutions for the paranoia that is so prevalent
>these days concerning software copying; but this is getting ridiculous.

     Paranoia?  Where?

>
>Jim
>Moore@NCSC.arpa
>(i've got heaps of pd s/w on my host, but it might not *really* be pd, so you
> can't have it, nyahh!!)


     (Hmm.  Don't sound like paranoia to me.  Sounds more like ... Oh forget
it. :-)