[Coin-discuss] copyright stuff

[Robin Lougee-Heimer]

For those of you interested in the legal side of things, questions like:
      How can I not be the author if I wrote the code?
      Don't all copyrights eventually expire?
Here are some interesting links that came my way thanks to  my esteemed
colleague, Mike Henderson.

Robin




http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono_Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

      "As a result, many literary works, movies and fictional characters,
      which were quite profitable for the copyright owners, were
      threatened with soon passing into the public domain. This included
      several characters owned by the Walt Disney Company; without  the
      act, Mickey Mouse would have entered the public domain between 2000
      and 2004 when early short films such as Steamboat  Willie and Plane
      Crazy were due to reach the end of the 75-year copyright term.

      Copyright owners successfully lobbied Congress for an extension of
      copyright, to provide for the same term of protection as exists in
      Europe. Hence both houses of the United States Congress passed the
      act as Public Law 105-298 with a voice vote, making it  impossible to
      determine who voted for the act and who voted against it, and passed
      it during both the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal  and the Kosovo War,
      ensuring that the act would get little coverage from the mainstream
      media.

      As a consequence of the act, no copyrighted works will enter into
      public domain due to term expiration in the United States until
      January 1, 2019, when all works created in 1923 will enter into
      public domain.

      In addition to Disney, Sonny Bono's widow and Congressional successor
      Mary Bono and the estate of George Gershwin supported the act. Mary
      Bono, speaking on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives,
      noted that "Sonny wanted the term of copyright protection to last
      forever", but that since she was "informed by staff that such a
      change would violate the Constitution", Congress might consider Jack
      Valenti's proposal of a copyright term of "forever less one day".

Wonder what they're passing this week...

http://www.fumetti.org/pubmik.htm

      "Under the old Copyright Act of 1909, copyright protection attached
      to any work published with a proper copyright notice. Conversely,
      copyright protection was terminated, instantaneously, for any  work
      published without a legally effective copyright notice. A legally
      effective copyright notice consisted of three elements: [1] the word
      "copyright", or the symbol "c", or the abbreviation "copr.", [2] the
      year of first publication in the United States (the "year-date"), and
      [3] the name of the copyright proprietor. In certain cases the
      year-date could be omitted without rendering the notice ineffective.
      Notice omitted from a single copy was sufficient to place a work into
      the public domain. Because this result was deemed too harsh, the
      notice requirement was (in essence) removed from the new Copyright
      Act of 1976. Consequently, forfeiture is not an active concept in the
      1976 Act, however, that concept is still alive and applicable for all
      copies published before 1978."

There's this 1998 NYT Op-ed piece --
http://www.law.asu.edu/HomePages/Karjala/OpposingCopyrightExtension/commentary/zeitlin.html

And here's some history on copyright and "work for hire":

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/IPCoop/91jasz1.html

      "Justice Brett, the Master of the Rolls, expressed his views somewhat
      dyspeptically:

           I confess I have the greatest difficulty in construing this Act
      of Parliament. Persons who draw Acts of Parliament will sometimes use
      phrases that nobody else     uses . . . It says -- "The author, and
      so on -- of every original painting." Who ever, in ordinary life,
      talks of the "author" of a painting?

         [N]ow we have "the author" of a photograph. I should like to know
      whether the person who drew this Act of Parliament was clear in his
      mind as to who can be the"author" of a photograph. . . . [The
      plaintiffs] think that they are the authors of the photograph because
      the photograph is made and formed by the work of their mere servants.
      . . . They may live 200 miles off. Can they be called the authors of
      a photograph of which they know nothing? It is done by their
      servants. They may go to the shop once a week; and when they are
      there they may superintend the operations, though I suppose they very
      seldom do. . . . Take this very case. It is not pretended that these
      gentlemen were at the Oval; they were either in London or fifty miles
      perhaps the other side of London. . . . I confess I cannot be very
      clear about it, all I can do is see who is the nearest person -- the
      nearest like the author of a painting or the author of a drawing.
      Certainly it is not the man who simply gives the idea of a picture,
      because the proprietor may say, "Go and draw that lady with a dog at
      her feet, and in one hand holding a flower." He may have the idea,
      but still he is not there. He may be 100 miles from the place, and he
      may have given the instructions by letter. . . ."