Copyright on Dvorak article

[Geoff Kuenning]

In article <15232 at ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Frank Godek writes:

> 	Come on Chuq.  I think that copywrite laws exist to make sure that
>     only the original author of a work gains financial or other benefit from
>     it.  Posting to the net, with credit given to the original author and
>     publication, is hardly detrimental to the author's interests.  I don't 
>     think that Mr. Dvorak would even want to bring suit against the net for
>     such a violation.  Is it even a violation?  Lighten up.  Your example of
>     posting a piece of software to a net without the author's permission is
>     not valid since such an incident would serve to deprive the author of
>     expected monetary return.  What is Mr. Dvorak or DEC Professional losing
>     via the posting of such an article to the net?

Mr. Godek, your naivete with regard to our legal system is touching.
He's losing sales of reprints of the article, in particular;  also sales
of that issue of the magazine.  We have no guarantee that a person who
has not read the article will buy a copy.  However, we can pretty well
count on it that those who *have* read the article will not but a copy
to be able to read it.  The law correctly regards this as an infringement
on Mr. Dvorak's rights.

An analogy is the theft of a sentimental object.  Just because the
object has no commercial value does not justify depriving the owner of it.
Similarly, it is quite illegal to publish a verbatim copy of the
article and infringe on Mr. Dvorak's right to sell copies, even if he
fails to sell a single one.
-- 

	Geoff Kuenning
	{hplabs,ihnp4}!trwrb!desint!geoff