Re: Asimov Site

[Sandra Warnken <warnken@mother.com>]

I have copied the following from http://www.loc.gov/copyright 
You do have to file for copyright.  The latest fees are increased to $30
up depending on what you are doing.

Sandy

   U.S. Copyright Office, Copyright Basics (Circular 1) (p15 of 50)
NOTICE OF COPYRIGHT
 
     The use of a copyright notice is no longer required under U. S.
     law, although it is often beneficial. Because prior law did contain
     such a requirement, however, the use of notice is still relevant to
     the copyright status of older works.
 
     Notice was required under the 1976 Copyright Act. This requirement
     was eliminated when the United States adhered to the Berne
     Convention, effective March 1, 1989. Although works published
     without notice before that date could have entered the public
     domain in the United States, the Uruguay Round Agreements Act
     (URAA) restores copyright in certain foreign works originally
     published without notice. For further information about copyright
     amendments in the URAA, request [56]Circular 38b.
 
     The Copyright Office does not take a position on whether copies of
     works first published with notice before March 1, 1989, which are
     distributed on or after March 1, 1989, must bear the copyright
     notice.
 
       U.S. Copyright Office, Copyright Basics (Circular 1) (p9 of 50)
 
     Copyright protects "original works of authorship" that are fixed in
     a tangible form of expression. The fixation need not be directly
     perceptible so long as it may be communicated with the aid of a
     machine or device. Copyrightable works include the following
     categories:
     * (1) literary works;
     * (2) musical works, including any accompanying words
     * (3) dramatic works, including any accompanying music
     * (4) pantomimes and choreographic works
     * (5) pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works
     * (6) motion pictures and other audiovisual works
     * (7) sound recordings
     * (8) architectural works
 
     These categories should be viewed broadly. For example, computer
     programs and most "compilations" may be registered as "literary
     works"; maps and architectural plans may be registered as
     "pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works."



On 29 Aug 2000, Paul Schlyter wrote:

> In article <39AB5396.EF6CEFF7@inetnebr.com>,
> Roy and/or Janet Miller  <millers@inetnebr.com> wrote:
>  
> > Paul Schlyter wrote:
> > 
> > Paul, the Swedish expert in American law pontifficated:
> > 
> >> Perhaps you're not aware of that anything is copyrighted unless the
> >> author explicitly says it's NOT copyrighted.....  So if you do
> >> nothing about the copyright, it's by default copyrighted.  Not that
> >> much trouble to do that, right?
> > 
> > Not according to a lawyer that I know. He said that you had to explicitly
> > state that a document is copyrighted to have the protection. Otherwise, the
> > document isn't copyrighted.
>  
> Perhaps the law is different for paper documents and for computer
> software.  In the latter case there were lots of discussions on
> Usenet a few years ago about the copyright law being changed such
> that copyright was always implicit, i.e. you had to put an explicit
> note there if you didn't want it to be copyrighted.
>  
> At that time I had some pieces of software (source code) which I had
> released to the public domain.  They had no copyright notice of
> course, but also no explicit note about it being PD.  So I was
> contacted by several people, who asked me to add such a note so that
> they could legally distribute it in freeware archives such as
> http://www.snippets.org
>  
> -- 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> Paul Schlyter,  Swedish Amateur Astronomer's Society (SAAF)
> Grev Turegatan 40,  S-114 38 Stockholm,  SWEDEN
> e-mail:  pausch at saaf dot se   or    paul.schlyter at ausys dot se
> WWW:     http://hotel04.ausys.se/pausch    http://welcome.to/pausch
> 
>