glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
Paul Schlyter wrote: (snip)I was a subscriber of Nibble for a few years back then, and I remember an editorial where he wrote about those of his subscribers which typed in a program from a listing in Nibble and then shared the program with their friends - he called them "sneak thieves", period. He thought these friends instead should buy their own copy of the magazine and then type in the program themselves! I guess he also frowned at people borrowing magazines from one another.....I am not so sure what the law says, but if the second user bought the magazine it doesn't seem unfair to share a copy of the typed in program. Some books, such as Numerical Recipes, have a similar copyright claim.
But loaning books and magazines is fair use, and sharing the result of following the instructions in a book or magazine is also fair use. Otherwise, one could not serve a dish prepared from a published recipe to a guest who did not subscribe! ;-) Nor could you copy the recipe for them, which is clearly fair use. Copying the whole magazine is out of bounds, as is copying it and selling them on the street, but single articles for non-commercial use cannot be forbidden, no matter what the fine print in the magazine may say. -michael NadaPong: Network game demo for Apple II computers! Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/ "The wastebasket is our most important design tool--and it's seriously underused."