Charging the net...

[Dan Bernstein]

In article <ass014w164w at mantis.co.uk> mathew at mantis.co.uk (mathew) writes:
> No, the prohibition against reproducing the book in any form is a copyright
> condition; it is merely stated explicitly.

``Copyright condition''?

A copyright is a set of exclusive rights held by the author of a work.
He can limit his rights in various ways, for example by giving public
notice of a copyright limitation. (A ``waiver'' is a complete limitation
of some right.) But he can never gain further rights. Copyright never
prevents fair use, or archival copies of software, or things you have to
do to software to make it run. Nothing the author does can prevent this.

A copyright limitation doesn't add rights. It takes them away.

> Well, according to the Federation Against Software Theft, "exceeding the
> evaluation period of shareware is also an offence" according to the act
> mentioned above.

Okay, so the law in Britain is stranger than I thought. Nothing similar
is true in the United States.

---Dan