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From: philm@astroatc.UUCP (Phil Mason)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: COPYRIGHT NOTICES
Message-ID: <415@astroatc.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 23-Aug-87 16:09:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: astroatc.415
Posted: Sun Aug 23 16:09:40 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 23-Aug-87 23:59:11 EDT
References: <6236@brl-smoke.ARPA> <25095@sun.uucp> <12133@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <224@n8emr.UUCP>
Reply-To: philm@astroatc.UUCP (Phil Mason)
Organization: Astronautics Technology Cntr, Madison, WI
Lines: 52

In article <224@n8emr.UUCP> lwv@n8emr.UUCP (Larry W. Virden) writes:
>I don't think that ANYONE should mess with a copyright notice other than
>the original author.  If a moderator, or anyone else for that matter, has
>a problem with the terminology in a source listing, they certainly have the
>right to delete the source or send back a request for further clarification,
>etc.  But even if the format and other info is incorrect, I dont believe
>that there is a legal right to mess with it.

However, there have been plenty of programs posted on USENET with rather
uninformed, naive and/or totally worthless copyright notices affixed to them.
In some cases authors have "placed the code in the public domain" and in the
same sentence attempted to "restrict commericial use" of the software.  

If a piece of work is placed in the public domain and is published or 
distributed, the author no longer has any more rights to the work at all.
All of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach is in the public domain - you can,
if you really want to be crass, legally publish them under your own name as if 
you wrote them.

Legally, a correct copyright notice does protect your rights as the author of
a work, such as a program.  Realistically, in an environment such as the 
USENET community, it is very difficult to fully protect your legal rights
when your software is widely distributed to both people who respect your 
copyright notice and people who do not.  Considering the number of countries
that have sites on USENET, your software could be sold commericially in another
country for years and you'd never hear of it!  There are some countries out
there that have different copyright laws, at least one of which I know has
NONE at this time (to the chagrin of the international community).

If you intend to post your work on USENET and really care enough about its
potential commericial value to place a copyright notice on it and do not
have a vast amount of funds reserved to aggressively prosecute violators of your
copyright, my advice is to not post it.  Really what we have here is an honor
system.  I haven't heard of anybody prosecuting anyone else over use of 
software posted on USENET - but that doen't mean that somebody isn't going
to prosecute in the future.

Summary :

(1) Public Domain means you have given up all rights to the work, no ifs, ands 
    or buts.
(2) Know your legal rights and how to protect them properly BEFORE YOU POST.
(3) The people who utilize software on USENET are effectively bound only
    by an honor system since copyright litigation is so expensive as to be
    out of the question for most posters, especially for international cases.


-- 
Kirk  : Bones ?                |  Phil Mason, Astronautics Technology Center
Bones : He's dead Jim.         |  Madison, Wisconsin - "Eat Cheese or Die!"
...seismo-uwvax-astroatc!philm |  I would really like to believe that my
...ihnp4-nicmad/               |  employer shares all my opinions, but . . .