On Jan 20, 7:12 am, Polymorph <polymorp...@hotmail.com> wrote:
On Jan 20, 12:08 am, "Bill Buckels" <bbuck...@mts.net> wrote:
"Polymorph" <polymo...@a2central.com.remove-snp-this> wrote:
This seems excessive. I am sorry you couldn't find time to edit the pages
that reference Mr. Cooper's literary work.
It may be a bit excessive, but it was the easiest way of ensuring that
anything "suspect" was no longer on offer. As I mentioned, I plan on
putting my website back up, sans all the TML/Complete Pascal stuff. I
may even translate some of my demo programs that were originally
written under Complete Pascal into Orca/Pascal - which is a pretty
trivial task, but I just need to find the time.
The manual should be excluded. Despite the fact that it is a derivative
work, it was produced for research and private study and the product could
not have been researched without it. Therefore it is a research paper and
has been published by you and belongs to you.
I'm no lawyer, so I have chosen to "play it safe" for now.
Please provide the manual to me and I will put it on my Canadian Websitewww.appleoldies.ca
I will inform this gentleman that it has been placed there under MY RIGHTS
under International Copyright Laws and is excluded from his property rights
which do not outweigh the rights of the public.
I am not a lawyer of course but the fact is that we do not live in a feudal
society and we have rights as the public that local jurisdictions can not
enforce rulings against since they are bound by International Law.
If I get any flack from this guy I will ask the Canadian Law Society to
offer this from their website as well and I will tell him so.
Thanks for your support, I may take you up on your offer.
It is just a shame that if this is the real Vince M. Cooper that he
chose to threaten legal action before requesting any TML/Complete
Pascal links be removed. For someone who has not been heard from in
the Apple II community for nearly 20 years, I think it was a bit over
the top. I also remember trying to find contact details for Vince way
back before placing anything on my website, but I turned up nothing.
Anyway, please be patient and I'll try and get the site back up
without any TML/Complete Pascal links...
Cheers,
Mike
Mike has it right. As Abandon-ware, it is only Abandon-ware if no one
author can be truly found with a reasonable search or is dead or if
the author has specified that they are abandoning the program. Vince
is well within his rights as the author in any country (Yes, even
Canada and China when the government decides to enforce the laws) to
claim his rights over his product. In that respect, it is not abandon-
ware. Although I use abandon-ware, I often wonder about this whole
thing as well. Is is ever truly abandon-ware? Our laws are being
written in the US so that you will have to maintain your copyright and
pay the government in order to keep it. This will in effect cause any
program that was written in the 1980's to all but lost its copyrighted
status unless tha author maintains the copyright, but that could be
very costly.
However, if I remember the 1980 copyright law correctly, just putting
your name on the program means it is a copyrighted work, no matter
what year it is. I have had to remove programs before because of this
and usually C&D compliance is the best idea. There are cases where it
doesnt come down to that, such as the case of Symantec choosing not to
go after the entire community on Copy II +. After all they paid 60
million dollars for Central Point and then shut down the entire line.
So then the question comes, is it abandon-ware or still copyrighted
material. Although most of us would say it is abandon-ware at that
point, under the law, Symantec could come along and say it is
copyrighted and remove it.
Personally, I dont think whether he threatened legal action or not is
the point. The manual and the software is his product, thus it is his
copyright. This is not the same as proving loss in a court of law.
It is only the copyright. but that still means he can request that
you take it down and if you refuse, take you to court and then if a
judge is feeling good that day, give him and his legal team as much
damages as the judge feels it warrants. (pray you dont get one who is
an Apple II enthusiast who buys and sells on Ebay). Copyrights cover
any written work that is original and if I am not mistaken, can even
be applied to emails and blogs and probably even our posts here.
LOL.
In the mean time, I have send an email to Vince since he was one of
our writers in the late 1980's asking him what his intentions are with
the program. Hopefully, he will put up a site and make it available
in some form again so that we all can continue to enjoy the program
(and manual).
The one area I think needs to clarified. Any standalone programs
written by you using his program are not copyrighted by him and cannot
be pursued. This is because they are original works and not derived
works of his program.
JMHO
--billm--