Path: utzoo!hoptoad!amdcad!apple!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!encore!bzs@encore.com
From: bzs@encore.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: alt.next
Subject: Re: Questions on NeXT machine
Keywords: NeXT
Message-ID: <4001@encore.UUCP>
Date: 25 Oct 88 22:12:40 GMT
References: <17780@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> <[9.13]karl@ddsw1.alt.next>
Sender: news@encore.UUCP
Reply-To: bzs@encore.com (Barry Shein)
Organization: Encore Computer Corp
Lines: 33
In-reply-to: karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM ([Karl Denninger])

>If universities don't regard piracy as "ok", and the college in question
>has taken steps to prevent a recurrance, why did they not agree to pay
>for the illicitly duplicated copies?
>
>The way I read the decision, you can sue to obtain an injunction which
>will prevent _further_ theft.  You cannot do anything at all about
>the theft which occurred before you found out (and filed said suit).
>
>Now, if the university in question really did commit an honest
>mistake (unlikely, most software has a prominent copyright notice!)
>then they should own up to it, pay the author (or publisher) his/her
>due, and go about their business.  Instead they went to court, fought
>tooth-and-nail, and by God, for the most part prevailed!

The decision was, as I understood it, that UCLA could not be held
liable under the copyright law because the law specifically excluded
them, as a state institution, from such liability.

Now, given that, I don't understand if you are trying to make a legal
or moral point (you do understand the difference?) UCLA was right
under the law, and the court asserted that. Was it wrong to go to
court (tooth and nail?) to discover this? Was it wrong that they were
right?! The vendors have a right to try to have the law changed, but
no one kept the facts of the law from them all these years etc.

It might be worth pondering what sort of situation we have here when
an industry seems to be wholly dependent upon the govt to enforce
their profits via police power. There are very few such industries,
even the book publishing industry is mainly concerned with having
their works republished, not obsessed with two people reading the same
book causing them to lose one sale.

	-Barry Shein, ||Encore||