Path: utzoo!dptcdc!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!bbn!gatech!udel!mmdf
From: rsine@nswc-wo.arpa (Sine)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Copyright
Message-ID: <13224@louie.udel.EDU>
Date: 16 Apr 89 18:36:34 GMT
Sender: mmdf@udel.EDU
Lines: 48

Concerning the copyright discussion, Thad Floryan writes:

>The EA software in question (the Deluxe Paint series) is clearly copyrighted
>and protected by US Federal law.  The last page of the DP-II manual states:

>        "SOFTWARE (c) 1986 ELECTRONIC ARTS"

If the manual really states this, (and I doubt it), then Marco and anyone
possessing the software being mentioned, can do as they please.  This is
because EA didn't follow the Copyright Form of Notice as defined in the
publication "Copyright Basics Circular No. 1", which complies with the
Copyright Act of 1976 which became effective January 1, 1978.  The document
states the following:

The notice should contain the following three elements:

1.  The Copyright symbol (the letter C in a circle), or the word "Copyright",
    or the abbreviation "Copr."; and
2.  The year of first publication of the work....
3.  The name of the owner of copyright in the work...

Notice that there is no mention of (C) or (c) and one could argue that the
software is not Copyright material.  The fact that you didn't know this
(judged by your posting) makes me question the validity of any of your 
statements.  By this I mean that you went into great detail making your
points, but still left the (c) in the message unexplained.

Back to the subject at hand, Section 106 of the Copyright Act generally
gives the owner of the copyright the exclusive right to do and to authorize
others to do the following:
...
To distribute copies of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or
other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
...

My understanding of this is that unless the copyright states that the
product can not be resold by the end user, then it can be.

Further, I have relicensed software many times.  I had a VMS machine that
became a Unix machine.  I called DEC and told them I wanted to transfer the
license to another machine and another person (so they pay for the updates)
and they said fine who's the other person, what's the serial numbers etc.

>I'm simply attempting to clarify some (otherwise) obscure points of law as
IMHO you've not clarified anything and have contributed to the confusion.

Ran
ARPA: rsine@nswc-wo