11 May
2000
11 May
'00
8:51 a.m.
I was reading a post on Slashdot about Microsoft pissing about a
huge thread on there about its "embracing and engulfing" the Kerberos
standard in its Windows 2000 product (see
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/02/158204 ).
The thread had links to a legal analysis of the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act (http://www.whitmorelaw.com/Copyright/dmca-analysis.html ).
Here's a link to the actual legislation
(http://www.hrrc.org/2281enrolled.pdf ). Although the first article is
written from the perspective of service provider liability, I can't help but
wonder what it means for us (as providers of the "content") in light of the
recent goings on with Napster and MP3.
For example, although I acknowledge the copyrights of the various
owners of the printed materials on my Web site (the AIM documents, for
example, since Rockwell is still around), I do not have explicit permission
from Rockwell to make those materials available.
I'm sure that many of us in
our preservation efforts have a mixture of documents
from defunct companies
and from live ones (but for which the products have been long discontinued).
How do we protect ourselves? My plan, frankly, is to continue with
my efforts until someone tells me to stop.
Thoughts?
Rich
11 May
11 May
8:28 a.m.
On Thu, 11 May 2000, Cini, Richard wrote:
How do we protect ourselves? My plan, frankly, is to
continue with
my efforts until someone tells me to stop.
I say tally ho old chap. That's probably the best course of action. Just
post the material to at least make it useful until which time you are
explicitly told by the copyright holder to remove it. The worst they can
do is ask you to remove it (cease and desist).
Might as well keep this stuff alive as long as there is a need for it and
as long as the original copyright holder has no plans for it. As long as
the original copyright holder is no longer marketing it and it's not being
sold for a profit then I don't see an ethical dilemma.
Sellam
11:35 a.m.
:: How do we protect ourselves? My plan, frankly, is to continue with
::my efforts until someone tells me to stop.
I think that's a good idea, but to be fair I never distribute anything
myself without the copyright owner's permission. That's why the only
Compute! articles I've ever reproduced were my own, because I retain
the copyrights (so says my author contracts). And you would be surprised
how easy to find some people are. Jim Butterfield, Mr. KIM, is a
regular suspect in comp.sys.cbm and has granted permission for almost
all of his books to be distributed online. In fact, he did a lot of
the OCRing himself. First Book of KIM probably is online in full by now.
Also, there was a title or two for comp.binaries.cbm that were originally
commercial. We asked the X-10 Corporation what they thought of us
posting the C64 version of the X-10 control software, and they said go
to it. In fact, they made it freeware, just for us. The other title was
a cool BASIC extension/assembler package that had been written by some
programmer named Brad Templeton. Yes, *that* Brad Templeton of
rec.humor.funny fame. Not too hard to find him. :-)
But I think no one will find your stance unreasonable. Most lawyers ask
questions first before shooting and will warn you before they want to
sue you. They can still bill their clients for the hours and don't have
to show up in court. :-P There was a misunderstanding over a software
title I was involved in (someone said it was freeware and then the copyright
owner showed up after I put it up for download), but it was cleared up
with no hard feelings. I'm sure the same would apply for you.
--
----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)ptloma.edu
-- Advertising is the banging of a stick in a swillbucket. -- George Orwell ---
12:03 p.m.
New subject: Digital Millennium Copyright Act - what does it mean for us?
At 01:51 PM 5/11/00 -0400, Cini, Richard wrote:
For example, although I acknowledge the copyrights of
the various
owners of the printed materials on my Web site (the AIM documents, for
example, since Rockwell is still around), I do not have explicit permission
from Rockwell to make those materials available. I'm sure that many of us in
our preservation efforts have a mixture of documents from defunct companies
and from live ones (but for which the products have been long discontinued).
I really like the fact that people are archiving old documents
in this fashion and placing them on the web. I'm very hard-core about
intellectual property rights, but on the other hand, it's near impossible
to find the original owners in most cases of antique computers.
By republishing without permission, what you're risking is the chance
that the proper owner could someday discover what you've done, and
decide that it's worth suing you to recover the damage you've caused.
- John
8833
days inactive
8833
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