Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!bbn.com!cosell
From: cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Copyright Notice (Amiga specific question)
Message-ID: <21045@bbn.COM>
Date: 22 Feb 88 19:01:17 GMT
References: <4815@ihlpg.ATT.COM> <3343@killer.UUCP> <2608@gryphon.CTS.COM> <1771@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <16964@think.UUCP> <7108@oberon.USC.EDU> <4509@garfield.UUCP>
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Reply-To: cosell@BBN.COM (Bernie Cosell)
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
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In article <4509@garfield.UUCP> john13@garfield.UUCP (John Russell) writes:
>In article <7108@oberon.USC.EDU> papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa) writes:
>>
>>"The notice for visually perceptible copies should contain the following
>>three elements:
>>
>> [ "copr", year, and name of copyright holder(NOT necessarily author!) ]
>
>I wonder what the situation is where you might include a "c in a circle"
>character in an Amiga text file, and it gets changed somewhere along the
>line to a ')' by something which rejects hi-bit-set characters?
>
>Would you lose copyright protection? Is a text file (which after all is
>meant to be read) considered a "visually perceptible copy"?

No, you do not lose your protection.  In fact, even if you put NO
notice at all on the work you still retain your rights (at least in the
US).  The trick is that the closer you come to conforming with the
statutes in the first place, the less hassle you'll have when you come
to try to enforce your copyright later on.  There is also a provision
on the other side such that innocent infringers on your copyright _may_
not be sueable for violations occurring before you patched things up
(although this depends on a bunch of stuff, not the least of which is
who can afford the most expensive lawyers).  In this context, it means
that (a) the sales you lose before you notice the absence of your
copyright notice are lost; (b) once you notify the after-publishers
they have to stop the infringing activities (jsut as if it were
properly copyrighted in the first place); and (c) presuming that they
DO stop, then you cannot take any legal action for things they did
before they can be presumed to know ofyour copyright.

Maybe this should be moved to misc.legal?
   __
  /  )                              Bernie Cosell
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