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From: dyer@atari.UUCP (Landon Dyer)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Cloning the new IBMs without violating copyrights
Message-ID: <727@atari.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 9-May-87 15:02:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: atari.727
Posted: Sat May  9 15:02:54 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 10-May-87 08:59:21 EDT
References: <499@mas1.UUCP>
Organization: Atari Corp., Sunnyvale CA
Lines: 22


Pretend you're a fascist piece of software checking for a string like:

	"(C)1987 HugeCorp, All Rights Reserved.  Violators will
	 be drawn, quartered and fed to diseased orangutangs."

What do you do when it turns 1988 or 1990, and the next revision of
the BIOS comes around?  Does your copyright-checking subroutine
handle arbitrary lists of dates?

In which case, what is the legal standing of a (bogus) copyright
message like:

	"(C)2099 HugeCorp, All Rights ..."

Do we wait until 2099 to go to court?

-- 
-Landon Dyer, Atari Corporation	       {sun,amdcad,lll-lcc,imagen}!atari!dyer
The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those	     SEGMENTS
of Atari or the AI software that has taken over my brain.	      ARE FOR
Yow!  I am waiting for my warranty-expired interrupt!			WORMS