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- Path: sparky!uunet!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!ai-lab!life.ai.mit.edu!friedman
- From: friedman@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Noah Friedman)
- Newsgroups: misc.int-property
- Subject: Re: Poisoned textbooks and net articles?
- Message-ID: <FRIEDMAN.92Aug13043701@nutrimat.gnu.ai.mit.edu>
- Date: 13 Aug 92 08:37:01 GMT
- References: <1992Aug10.225150.29474@unislc.uucp> <7154@skye.ed.ac.uk>
- <1992Aug12.041630@eklektix.com> <7172@skye.ed.ac.uk>
- Sender: news@ai.mit.edu
- Followup-To: misc.int-property
- Organization: Free Software Foundation, 675 Mass Ave. Cambridge, MA 02139
- Lines: 21
- In-reply-to: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk's message of 12 Aug 92 15:15:55 GMT
-
- In article <7172@skye.ed.ac.uk> (in comp.unix.bsd), jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
- >OK, (1) suppose someone posts some code to the net w/o a copyright notice.
- >Can I use it, or is there an implicit copyright that says "no"? If the
- >latter, then I may be better off if I don't read net articles that contain
- >code.
-
- It probably depends on whether the country where the message originated
- has adopted the Berne Convention or not. The United States adopted the
- Berne Convention sometime in 1986. Anything posted by someone in the USA
- after that time is implicitly copyrighted unless there is a specific
- disclaimer in the message. This applies to all copyrightable works, not
- just usenet posts.
-
- Check with a lawyer for more details. I'm just a disgruntled American
- citizen who thinks the Berne Convention is a bad idea. If people can't be
- bothered to put a simple copyright notice on something they publish, it
- seems like it would be far more beneficial to leave the work in the public
- domain, where it will be the most beneficial. Especially in this country,
- people seem to be forgetting why we have patents and copyrights in the
- first place.
-
-