Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cca!mirror!rayssd!brunix!nancy!rjd
From: rjd@nancy (Rob Demillo)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Copyright notices (was: Shareware? Hah!)
Message-ID: <23519@brunix.UUCP>
Date: 7 Mar 88 19:33:39 GMT
References: <4815@ihlpg.ATT.COM> <3343@killer.UUCP> <2608@gryphon.CTS.COM> <333@esquire.UUCP> <22977@brunix.UUCP> <21023@bbn.COM> <2069@polya.STANFORD.EDU> <28@dcs.UUCP> <20124@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Sender: root@brunix.UUCP
Reply-To: rjd@nancy.UUCP (Rob Demillo)
Organization: Brown University Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 51

In article <20124@bu-cs.BU.EDU> madd@bu-it.bu.edu (Jim Frost) writes:
>>One interesting question is this, however: As has been stated, a
>>"c in parentheses" is not a valid legal substitute for a "c in a circle".
>>
>>Thus, " (c) 1987 by John Doe " is not a valid copyright notice.
>>
>
>I would put my money on notices of the type:
>
>	(c) Copyright 1988 Jim Frost All Rights Reserved
>
>as being legal for two reasons.  First, it satisfies the requirements
>of the copyright law, and second, your uSoft linker displays this when
>you run it.  It seems likely that uSoft's lawyers know what they're
>doing.

Sorry Jim -- you would lose your money. There has been an alarming amount
of misinformation about the legalities of software protection on the net
of late (not just comp.sys.atari.st). For a complete treatment on the topic,
please consult "Copyright Law," an article by Jordan Breslow, an attorney
practicing copyright and computer law in California.

This article is routinely distributed with the News package for UNIX systems.
If you are on a UNIX machine that has News (as you must be to be reading this),
contact your local systems manager to ask him for a copy of it. He/she should
have it on line somewhere.

To get back to the topic, I quote from this paper:

"...unfortunately, computers don't draw small circles very well [refering
to the symbol of the c with a circle around it for a copyright mark],
so programmers have resorted to a c in parenthesis: (c). Too bad. That
has no legal meaning. When you put your notice in the code and on the
screen, use Copyright or Copr. if you can't make a circle..."




                     - Rob DeMillo
		       Brown University - Planetary Science Group
		       
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