Re: Conversion filters; intellecutal property

[Norman Bauman nbauman@xxxxxxxx]

I don't want to get into a long digression on copyright which I've been
through many times on other lists, but let's go through it one more time.

(As soon as I find a magazine that will pay me $1 a word to do it, I want
to actually interview some copyright lawyers on this point and find out
what the law actually is.)

At 11:03 AM 10/25/01 -0400, Leslie Bialler wrote:

>Copyright now extends for the life of the author plus 70 years.

The copyright life is different for corporate work-for-hire copyrights,
isn't it?

>Although this law may help Disney,

That's for sure. Disney is a big campaign contributor. They were the
largest single contributor to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign. I had the
feeling that these carpetbaggers (Disney and others) from outside New York
State came in with lots of money, brushed aside several other
well-respected local senatorial candidates, and put in their own. I don't
think it's fair for corporations to contribute hundreds of millions of
dollars to get the laws they want, and then say we have to follow the law.
It may be the law, but it doesn't have anything to do with right and wrong
or ethics.

>its main purpose was to be in harmony with the laws in
>Europe, which are precisely that, and the intention of which is to protect
the
>author and the next generation.

I thought that the U.S. copyright laws were more favorable to the author
than the European laws. I know that there was a time when you could
download texts of James Joyce from Canada, where they were in public
domain, while they were still under copyright in the U.S. My understanding
was that the U.S. strongarmed the Europeans into complying with our laws.
But I could be wrong.


>But I digress. Let us return to the statutes as they exist today. Some of the
>list members want, in effect, to engage in piracy of intellectual property.

Well, yes. I'm talking about an *abandoned* program, that is not available
otherwise. Dover publications was quite successful republishing abandoned
books, when the copyright laws made it easier.

>The copyright law protects software developers against such plundering.

The *purpose* of the copyright act is to promote the useful arts and
sciences. If a prohibition against copying would interfere with the useful
arts and sciences, then that prohibition is defeating the purpose of the
copyright act.


>Let us say Norman Bartleby has decided to privately print the novel ...
today,
October 25, 2001.

>Now imagine it is 2021. Norman has just passed on at age 88, and nephew Max,
>his sole surviving heir, is executor of his estate.
>
>Professor Plum, prowling through the archives of the
>University of Florida... contracts with a university press to reprint the
volume,
>with his introduction and scholarly annotations.
>
>Certainly the University Press in question would not think of proceeding w/o
>written permission from Nephew Max!! I'm sure we would all agree that
anything
>else would be a violation of the law.

Leslie, that's what happens to people who work for a university press with
a law school next door.

Let's change the hypothetical. Suppose there is no Nephew Max. Suppose
Norman dies with no heirs, and the ownership of Norman's book passes to the
State, they auction off his car, his estate winds up in a file in the
Attorney General's office, and they have no provision for negotiating with
publishers or giving reprint permission. Or suppose Nephew Max becomes a
busy businessman and doesn't want to bother with an apparently unprofitable
publishing venture. The great novel is lost to the world. Norman's last
wish is foiled to at least have the recognition after his death that he was
denied during his life.

So Professor Plum could never publish this great novel.

My feeling is that it's right to publish a work in a situation like that
when the copyright has been abandoned, and there may even be a legal way to
do it.

(BTW, I write a lot of medical articles, and I am happy to see people copy
my articles on the Internet for non-profit purposes, since I couldn't make
any more money from them anyway. A lot of medical writers feel that way.)

>And yet, and yet, when it comes to
>XyWrite some of you have no such compunctions--even though, as has been
>explained, the product is licensed to a third party--a third party that
has, in
>fact, as has also been explained, now hired one of the original creators
of the
>XyWrite software!

Suppose I wanted to rewrite XyDOS in Linux. Would there be anything wrong
with that?

And besides, didn't XyQuest write the original software as a copy of the
Atex system, in violation of the copyright laws which Atex retrospectively
decided to overlook?

>I say nay.

I say yea. That's why they have horse races. I don't think it's *unethical*
to copy an abandoned work. I think the laws should change to reflect that.

Norman


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Norman Bauman
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