* "Eric L. Strobel" <fyzycyst_at_home.com> on Thu, 06 Sep 2001
| (where permanent = lifetime + X years). What I take from that is that when
| someone is no longer actively profiting from their work (whether by choice
| or through the march of time), then the entire reason for the copyright is
| gone.
In this you are sorely mistaken. Copyright, the right to copy. That
includes *not* copying the work and not allowing anyone else to copy it, if
that is your choice. As I said, copyright cannot be involuntarilly
forfeited. Copyright can expire; it can be transferred to another; it can
be voluntarilly revoked, placing a work into the Public Domain. But it
cannot be lost.
"Actively profiting" has nothing to do with it. An immediate example is
anything distributed under the GNU Public License, the gist of which is, if
you use GPL code you must openly publish your code under the GPL or a less
restrictive license, thus expanding the body of GPL software available to
everyone. People who publish code under the GPL usually make no profit
whatsoever, other than the warm, fuzzy feeling it gives them. Companies
like Microsoft hate this kind of license -- which is enforced by copyright
law! -- because they cannot take GPL code and use it themselves without
openly publishing their source code and depriving themselves of their
revenue.
Or maybe I wrote something that I think is embarassing and I don't want
increasing numbers of copies of it roaming around.
-- Rat <ratinox_at_peorth.gweep.net> \ Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball. Minion of Nathan - Nathan says Hi! \ PGP Key: at a key server near you! \-- This is the Newtontalk mailinglist - http://www.newtontalk.net To unsubscribe or manage: visit the above link or mailto:newtontalk-request_at_newtontalk.net?Subject=unsubscribe
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Wed Oct 03 2001 - 12:01:26 EDT