Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pacbell!pbhyf!che
From: che@pbhyf.UUCP (Mitch Che)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: MEAN18 AUTHOR REPLIES TO POSTING:
Message-ID: <2985@pbhyf.UUCP>
Date: 17 Mar 88 23:08:13 GMT
References: <235400004@prism> <235400005@prism> <2963@pbhyf.UUCP> <1157@slvblc.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Lines: 30

In article <1157@slvblc.UUCP>, dick@slvblc.UUCP (Dick Flanagan) writes:
> I am continually amazed at the level of ignorance (usually accompanied by
> an equal measure of arrogance) exhibited by some people on the copyright
> vs. public domain issue.  I will be as brief as I can so as not to tax
> some attention spans.
Dick, ouchy, touchy!  I thought I'd post a copy of some mail I recently
sent (to someone who pointed out the difference between PD and
distribution) to clarify my original point:

From che Tue Mar 15 21:54:22 1988
To: ptsfa!bellcore!utah-cs!cai.utah.edu!.....
Subject: Re: MEAN18 AUTHOR REPLIES TO POSTING:

I stand corrected.  Sloppy terminology, but then I'm not a lawyer.
My point remains the same as in my original posting - whether it's
free public distribution, shareware, or whatever (as you pointed out,
not "public domain"), copyrighted != "paid for at a store or mailorder."
I don't know the person who originally posted the software that started
all this, but the implication that he naturally should have known that
it was a commercial program because of the copyright is foolish.  Someone
else posted "a copyright is all you need to know"  Give me a break.
	Let's say you see this:   "Copyright 1988 J. Smith"
Is this software from a store, mailorder, free distribution, the Net
or pirated?  If you can't tell from this line alone, then it must be
something other than the copyright notice that gives it away.  Oh
well....
-- 
Mitch Che   Pacific Bell		 "Tape librarians will mount anything."
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