RE: Re: More questions [from herc/390]

Jeffrey,
 In the UK it has never been necessary to register your copyright, so
perhaps the law has never been as universal as I thought.
    Dave.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeffrey R. Broido [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: 06 November 2003 17:21
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: [hercules-advocacy] Re: More questions [from herc/390]
> 
> 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>
> 
> 
> 
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> 
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