at the temporal coordinates: 9/7/01 1:22 PM, the entity known as Jon Glass
at jonglass_at_usa.net conveyed the following:
>
> on 9/7/01 3:24 AM, Eric L. Strobel at fyzycyst_at_home.com wrote:
>
>> we're trying to find a legitimate way of doing something other
>> than say "too bad, so sad."
>
> I'm trying to avoid this discussion, but here is a question.
>
> What if, unfortunately, the only legitimate way _is_ to say "to bad, so
> sad." What then, eh? Is this something that people are willing to do? Or,
> then does it become, well, we are going to do what we want (or think we
> need). I think this needs to be seriously considered. What if our choices
> are limited to this?
>
> In a like vein, somebody quoted somebody else, with the upshot that
> copyright exists to forward sceience and the arts, etc. That protecting the
> original works allows it to be propogated, thus furthering the ends of
> science. In application to the Newton, couldn't some of us write new
> software based on these older models, without using their code? This would
> sound reasonable, especially if they could correct those niggling problems
> that all software seems to have.:-)
I believe you have it absolutely right. If, after all this debate it is
determined that, if no copyright holder can be reached or if they choose to
not answer with a clear yes/no equals "too bad, so sad", then that's what we
have to live with and go on from there.. And yes, my suggestion was going
to be just as you suggest -- the abandonware becomes an opportunity for
someone to duplicate the capabilities.
Which leads to more interesting questions. Using the photography example
raised in another message, a photo is a copyrighted work and if the holder
vanishes completely, then that photo is forever (well, at least for all
practical purposes) locked away from use due to current copyright law. But
what if another photographer manages to shoot the same object under
essentially the same lighting conditions and manages to get the exposure and
everything to be very similar to the earlier work. Has the copyright on the
first photo been violated? I suspect that this is an area where an
incredible amount of hair splitting goes on.
- Eric.
-- 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 - 12:01:33 EDT