Re: More questions [from herc/390]
"Jeffrey R. Broido" <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.comp.emulators.hercules390.advocacy |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
David, Indeed, there have been copyright laws in force during the entire computer era, but there was a great deal of controversy over whether they could apply to software until enough judicial precedent built- up to make software copyright common and enforcable. It is certainly true that in the absence of copyright notices embedded in the media that a work cannot be considered copyright- protected, but the converse is not entirely true. For if a work's copyright is not registered, the right is not enforcable. As an example of this, I wrote a relatively minor piece of code in 1984, a TSO CP called MAPXA, and contributed it to the CBT tape. It had an embedded copyright notice but I didn't bother to register the copyright and, in any case, in 1984 I'm not certain that my registration would have been accepted. A few years later, I found my code, most of it byte-for-byte identical, embedded in Boole & Babbage's product, RESOLVE, with my copyright notice replaced with theirs. I complained to them that among their staff was, apparently, at least one pirate and they had the gall to write me an official letter claiming to have written the code from scratch in-house. As I hadn't registered the copyright, I had no legal leg to stand on. Bomber --- In hercules-advocacy, David Wade wrote: <snip> > There have, as far as I know always been software copyright laws. > They certainly pre-date much of the software that is now free. > They did however require that the copyright owner declare their > copyright. IBM did not do this on early versions of VM. It > therefore has no copyright status. IBM cannot prevent it being > copied, redistributed or modified. <snip> ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Rent DVDs Online - Over 14,500 titles. No Late Fees & Free Shipping. Try Netflix for FREE! http://us.click.yahoo.com/xlw.sC/XP.FAA/3jkFAA/dpFolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: hercules-advocacy-unsubscribe-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw@public.gmane.org Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/