Re: Image legality: you've got to be kidding !!??

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Original poster: "Jim Lux" <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net> 


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From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
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Sent: Sunday, March 07, 2004 7:53 AM
Subject: Re: Image legality: you've got to be kidding !!??


 > Original poster: "Dr. Resonance" <resonance-at-jvlnet-dot-com>
 >
 >
 > If information is intended to not be copied notice of copyright or some
 > other legal notice has to be given with each post.  Otherwise it's
 > considered general public knowledge and free for the taking.

Let's distinguish between copyright, which is quite specific in its impact,
and ideas and information.  As Dr. R says, the ideas ARE general public
knowledge (in that they are not "trade secrets") and can be freely used as
ideas.  Be aware though, that you have a year to file a patent after
disclosure, and if the patent eventually issues, then, all of a sudden,
they're not free to use.  One cannot, however, patent "ideas" or
"information" alone, just some way of using them. Many high-tech companies
have found this submarine patent idea quite useful... talk up an idea in
public so it gets adopted (to the extent of joining industry standards
organizations), file for the patents, and then, several years later when the
patent issues, hope that lots of people are using it and go after them for
royalties (the recent RAMBUS case springs to mind).


For copyright, though, it's different, especially since 1989, when the
requirement for notice was removed. All written works (technically, "fixed
in a tangible medium")  are presumed copyright, even without explicit
notice.  If I get a letter from, for instance, Martha Stewart, she holds the
copyright, and I can't reproduce it (or, for that matter hang it on a wall
in public.. that being a form of "publication") without permission.

  The notice makes it harder for an infringer to claim "innocent
infringment", and would probably make it tough to collect damages.
Registering copyright makes it even harder to claim innocent infringement,
and is necessary to collect certain types of damages (you can collect
statutory damages for infringement of a registered copyright, without having
to show actual damages).

Something doesn't enter the "public domain" unless it has either "timed out"
after a (large) number of years, or if the copyright holder (usually the
author) explicitly releases it.

 >From Stanford's excellent web site at http://fairuse.stanford.edu/
"A copyright is the set of exclusive legal rights authors have over their
works for a limited period of time. These rights include copying the works
(including parts of the works), making derivative works, distributing the
works, and performing the works (this means showing a movie or playing an
audio recording, as well as performing a dramatic work). Currently, the
author's rights begin when a work is created. A work does not have to bear a
copyright notice or be registered to be copyrighted. "

(My quotation is an example of "fair use"... I haven't copied the website
wholesale, the excerpt is used to advance the content of my post, etc.
(basically, it meets all the 4 prongs of the "fair use" test on the Stanford
site Purpose, Nature, Amount, Market).

Quoting a previous post in a reply would also be an example of fair use.  I
would think, though, that the whole area of copyright, in the context of a
mailing list such as this, is an area of some legal fuzziness.  Are you, by
posting, tacitly giving your consent for the mailing list operator to
reproduce it?

 >
 > Plagiarism isn't pretty, but it's not illegal unless legal notice was
given
 > with the written data, it's not illegal.  Unethical perhaps, but not
 > illegal.
 >
 > Dr. Resonance

Plagiarism isn't illegal, because it's not a direct copy (or a trivially
modified copy... aka derivative work). It's presenting another's ideas as
your own.  If I were to write a carefully reasoned paper presenting my new
idea that breakdown voltage in a spark gap is proportional to the product of
distance and pressure, that would be plagiarism, but probably not copyright
infringment (since Paschen's article has long since passed into the public
domain... I could perfectly legally copy his figures and tables into my
paper)  Direct copies, as Kreso has done, are pretty clear cut.

The one hiccup in whether what Kreso has done is technically illegal is
whether he is in a country subject to the Berne Convention and whether the
Berne Convention has notice requirements above what the "country of
authorship" needs.   I suspect the latter isn't the case (hence the
statement at the end of the trailers in movies "XYZ is the country of
authorship for this photoply for the purposes of the Berne Convention").