copyright notice

[Eli Liang]

In article <605 at scc.UUCP> steiny at scc.UUCP writes:
>In article <8422 at amdcad.UUCP>, phil at amdcad.UUCP (Phil Ngai) writes:
>> In article <3167 at sun.uucp> marcum at sun.uucp (Alan Marcum) writes:
>> >From what I recall from oh-so-many moons ago in school, to copyright a
>> >work, you must place the appropriate notice on the work, and place a
>> >copy of the work in an at least semi-public library (i.e. publish it).
>> >This library need not be the Library of Congress.
>> 
>> It irritates me when people who don't know what they are talking about
>> post garbage to the net when they could so easily look it up.
>> 
>> From "The World Almanac 1986", page 686:
>> 
>> "... copies or phonorecords of works published in the U.S. with notice
>> of copyright are required to be deposited for the collections of the
>> Library of Congress. This deposit requirement is not a condition of
>> protection, but does render the copyright owner subject to penalties
>> for failure to deposit after a demand by the Register of Copyrights."
>> 
>	There may be such a requirement, but it has nothing
>to do with copyrighting a document.  According to "Legal Care
>For Your Software," p. 36: "The Copyright offices requests
>only the first twenty-five pages and the last twenty-five
>pages of the program."
>
>	On p. 37 it says: "If you forget to send the code you
>may, theoretically, be liable for a fine.  . . . the fine
>is rarely (if ever) imposed . . . 
>	
>>  (C) 1986 Joe Random is not a valid copyright.
>>  Copyright 1986 Joe Random is.
>> 
>	According to the same book, p. 29:
>
>	The internationally recognized copyright symbox, [circle
>with a C in it], should always be the first part of the notice.
>Since CRT screens and most dot matrix printers don't have a [circle
>with a C in it], you can substitute and use a (C).  The
>second part of the notice is the word "Copyright."  Technically
>this is unnecessary as long as you have a [circle with a C in it], . . .
>
>-- 
>scc!steiny
>Don Steiny @ Don Steiny Software 
>109 Torrey Pine Terrace
>Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060
>(408) 425-0382


So many people have quoted the book, "Legal Care for Your Software", that
I think we should take a look at this book.  A lot of the things quoted are
opposite of what I learned in school too.  Not to say that the author is
in error, but who is he anyways?  Is he a lawyer?  I think that if I had a
stake in the matter, I wouldn't trust anyone short of a patent lawyer to
give me the answer....

-eli
-- 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Eli Liang  ---
        University of Maryland Computer Vision Lab, (301) 454-4526
        ARPA: eli at cvl, eli at lemuria, eli at asgard, eli at mit-mc, eli at mit-prep
        CSNET: eli at cvl  UUCP: {seismo,allegra,brl-bmd}!umcp-cs!cvl!eli