Digital Millennium Copyright Act - what does it mean for us?

From: Cameron Kaiser <ckaiser_at_oa.ptloma.edu>
Date: Thu May 11 15:35:02 2000

:: How do we protect ourselves? My plan, frankly, is to continue with
::my efforts until someone tells me to stop.

I think that's a good idea, but to be fair I never distribute anything
myself without the copyright owner's permission. That's why the only
Compute! articles I've ever reproduced were my own, because I retain
the copyrights (so says my author contracts). And you would be surprised
how easy to find some people are. Jim Butterfield, Mr. KIM, is a
regular suspect in comp.sys.cbm and has granted permission for almost
all of his books to be distributed online. In fact, he did a lot of
the OCRing himself. First Book of KIM probably is online in full by now.
Also, there was a title or two for comp.binaries.cbm that were originally
commercial. We asked the X-10 Corporation what they thought of us
posting the C64 version of the X-10 control software, and they said go
to it. In fact, they made it freeware, just for us. The other title was
a cool BASIC extension/assembler package that had been written by some
programmer named Brad Templeton. Yes, *that* Brad Templeton of
rec.humor.funny fame. Not too hard to find him. :-)

But I think no one will find your stance unreasonable. Most lawyers ask
questions first before shooting and will warn you before they want to
sue you. They can still bill their clients for the hours and don't have
to show up in court. :-P There was a misunderstanding over a software
title I was involved in (someone said it was freeware and then the copyright
owner showed up after I put it up for download), but it was cleared up
with no hard feelings. I'm sure the same would apply for you.

-- 
----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
     Cameron Kaiser * Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser_at_ptloma.edu
-- Advertising is the banging of a stick in a swillbucket. -- George Orwell ---
Received on Thu May 11 2000 - 15:35:02 BST

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