Charging the net....

[mathew]

woods at robohack.UUCP (Greg A. Woods) writes:
> In article <1991Apr22.192306.29134 at looking.on.ca> brad at looking.on.ca (Brad Te
> Brad, if you send me a free copy of a book, I can do any number of
> things with it while steadfastly holding to the Copyright Act. [...]
> it in any work of my own.  I can totally destroy it.  I can photocopy
> it and put the original away for safe-keeping.        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
No you can't. That's breaking copyright law, and is explicitly prohibited in
the copyright notices on most books. You know, the bit which says "No part of
this publication may be reproduced [...] in any form or by any means [...]
photocopying [...] or otherwise."

It is true that in practice people tend to turn a blind eye to copies made
for personal use. That doesn't mean it's legal, though.

And you can make "fair use" copies of sections of the book. But not the whole
book.

>                                                  I can give away the
> photocopy and destroy the original.

You can't do that, either. "This book is sold subject to the condition that
it shall not [...be...] circulated [...] in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which it is published."

> Shareware, as distributed across Usenet, cannot exist in practice,
> since the "license" it is shipped with is un-enforcable.

In what sense?  It has already been enforced on occasion -- I have read that
companies have been forced to pay up for shareware they have copied -- so
your claim that it is "unenforcable" is curious.

>                                                           I would say
> it is even more useless than the average shrink-wrap "license", since
> there is no way you can make me read the license before I read the
> file in my spool directory, thus I can have (i.e. own) a copy before I
> agree to the license.

You have to own a copy of a textual representation of the file. However,
before you get the program you must voluntarily uudecode and uncompress it.
In the case of much PC shareware, the uncompress process displays a banner
message proclaiming that the program is shareware and telling you to consult
the license before running it.

> Also, be careful when you say "complete control over copying of the
> work".  What this really means is "complete control over profiting
> from the work".

No, because even not-for-profit distribution of the work can be controlled.
You can't post copies of Microsoft software to the net just because you're
not personally making a profit by doing so; and you can't make copies of the
telephone directory and sell them just because the telephone company doesn't
try to make a profit on them.

>                  Once something is published, control over use or
> distribution cannot be done.

Again, this is simply not true. There are many cases of books and albums
being recalled after publication because of copyright violation.

>                               (Here I mean distribution of the ideas,
> etc. -- a book may pass from hand-to-hand without restriction by the
> copyright holder.)

For free, yes; you can give a book to a friend. For profit, no; you can't
lend a book, hire it out or re-sell it. Not legally, anyway; again, in
practise the publishers turn a blind eye to people selling second-hand books
for charity, on market stalls, and so on.

Are you sure you're up-to-date with your copyright law?  Your references to
"the Copyright Act" leave me in doubt.


mathew
[ Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer ]

-- 
mathew - mathew at mantis.co.uk or mcsun!ukc!ibmpcug!mantis!mathew