Apple 1 schematics - (OT) copyright comments

On Sat, 2003-01-18 at 16:34, chris wrote: Well Steve Wozniak designed the Apple 1 and was part of the homebrew computer club, which was a pretty open group of people into sharing information, he would probably say the design is in the public domain. He is probably happy that people are preserving his work and that they find joy in preserving the history of microcomputers. <SNIP> How are you going to get the ROMs if everybody believes in strict copyright? I think it would be just about impossible to recreate an old system without stepping on somebody's copyright. --- a general rant to the list --- Companies generally are not interested in maintaining their old copyrights and preserving them, in the vast majority of cases old works are is only maintained by dedicated hobbyists or librarians. This is why "hard copyrights" like we have now with encryption and digital restrictions entering firmware and severe criminal penalties for any violation, without the character of the infringement even being considered, is wrong. Before 1973 the owners of a copyright had to actively maintain it by first claiming copyright and second by registering it to keep it active after the initial 28years. Before the No Electronic Theft Act in 1996(7?) it was not considered infringement to reproduce works as long as the work was not being actively maintained i.e. publicly available and it was not done fore profit. So if I had a copy of a manual for an old piece of equipment I was free to make a copy and give it to you as long as I did not profit directly from the act. There is no logical reason that many technically infringing uses of abandoned copyrights should be perfectly legal as long as it is not for profit. If your argument to refute this is that the author has a right control of the work, I would say that this right is not absolute since it is legal for me to make a dub of a CD for my car, to sing happy birthday (still copyrighted) at a birthday party in my home, and to record TV off the air without having to pay royalties to anyone. I see it as once an author makes a works publicly available, additional non-commercial uses should fall into fair use if the author does not continue making the work available to the public. ::sigh:: OK, I have that off my chest for now. Actually a discussion copyright probably does belong on this list since people are discussing making copies of manuals, eproms, paper tapes, etc to preserve and keep old systems running and all these fall under copyright and reproducing them is a infringe of copyright without the author's consent even if it is done for non-commercial purposes under current US law. Regards, Paul