Re: Mecc titles

[wbdesnoy@acs2.acs.ucalgary.ca (Byron Desnoyers Winmill)]

Mike Westerfield (MikeW50@aol.com) wrote:
: > The copyright itself
: > says to the government "if this software is discovered
: > pirated, I want to enforce the copyright."

: Agreed.  And I agree with the intent of the law.  But there are still some
: interesting gray areas.  One is that, as stated by you, I just violated
: copyright law.  (I think.)  Under current copyright law, pretty much any
: original work, literally down to a scribble on a napkin, is copyrighted.
: While I don't see the D.O.J. prosecuting for it, that would technically make
: copying someone's post a copyright violation unless they explicitly released
: it to the public domain.

In the forementioned message, you probably did not break copyright law since
you automatically have the right to quote a reasonable amount of text for
the purpose of academic (?) discussion.  Of which, this most certainly
qualifies.

OTOH - You quoted an excessivly large chunk of my post, and I quoted an
excessivly large chunk of your post.  So, for all intents and purposes, it
may be possible for us to charge each other under copyright law.  Though I
doubt that it would hold up.

Which actually brings up an interesting point: most software is not
distributed under the protection of copyrights alone.  It is distributed
via a licence agreement.  I believe that many of these licence agreements
are actually in defiance of copyright laws, which entitle you to make
backup copies, to reverse assemble (I *believe* that Canadian copyright
law gives you the right to even modify) software, etc..  But that is not
even the worse of it.

--
Stopped (SIGTTOU)         byron.
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