From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,c42dbf68f5320193 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-05-01 05:43:27 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Generation of permutations Date: 1 May 2002 05:43:27 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: <5ee5b646.0205010443.55afee85@posting.google.com> References: <5ee5b646.0204301457.52a492c3@posting.google.com> <11Hz8.4180$PE6.2467133575@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.232.38.244 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1020257007 7340 127.0.0.1 (1 May 2002 12:43:27 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 1 May 2002 12:43:27 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:23329 Date: 2002-05-01T12:43:27+00:00 List-Id: tmoran@acm.org wrote in message news:<11Hz8.4180$PE6.2467133575@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com>... > Before Wes beats it to Rio, I'd note: "Registration with the United > States Copyright Office is, however, required to bring a lawsuit to > enforce your copyright." in The Software Developer's and Marketer's Legal > Companion, c 1993. Also "Registered works may be eligible for statutory > damages and attorney's fees in successful litigation." at > http://www.copyright.gov/faq.html#q14 So there's hope that it wasn't put > on Simtel 17 years ago in the hope Doug Bryan could grab some easy money. > Maybe someone will e-mail all Simtel material authors suggesting they > register, sue everyone who picks up the bait, and pay a finder's fee to > the e-mailer, who will then get rich. ;) Yes, of course you have to register the copyright to bring action. But you own the copyright without registration, and you just register to bring the action, happens all the time. In fact it is almost the norm to not bother to register until you need to take legal action. So the fact that something is not registered does not mean you can copy it with impunity. It is true that under some circumstances, failure to timely register can lose the presumption of originality, but that only happens in a narrow set of circumstances, and in any case only shifts the burden of proof, not the potential liability for the copyright violation. People should learn to take copyright law more seriously in this field. Now that so much stuff floats around pretty freely on the net, anyone downloading anything must put in some effort to ensure that they are not violating copyrights, or they take a risk. Yes, for personal use, a lot of people will take at face value a license agreement on a file that purports to give appropriate rights, and that's probably reasonable, but if you are doing serious work, you need to be more careful. And nothing can excuse this odd situation where party A writes some software, party B grabs it, slaps on a copyright notice and then claims to have assigned to party C without any involvement of parties A or C. By the way, a copyright notice that reads copyrighted by X and the FSF is almost certainly bogus. This is not the standard form of statement on anything to which the FSF legitimately and actually holds copyright interest.