Qt/Embedded

[kmself at ix.netcom.com]

on Fri, Nov 17, 2000 at 08:22:57PM -0800, David Johnson (david at usermode.org) wrote:
> On Friday 17 November 2000 08:02 pm, kmself at ix.netcom.com wrote:
> 
> > > I've heard this before, but I've always dismissed it as hearsay. I
> > > will have to look up Mai v Peak. The implications of this are
> > > mind-boggling! Does Stephen King have rights to my brain because I've
> > > read his books and they're now in my memory?
> >
> > The legal test of copyrightability (what is copyrightable) is "original
> > works of authorship, fixed in a tangible medium" [1].  Or at least the
> > second part of that.
> 
> This seems to be a different issue. Those are good attributes for what
> can be copyrighted. But it doesn't follow that they are necessarily
> the same attributes for what can be regulated by the copyright holder.
> One specific example is a movie. The author can restrict how a movie
> is shown, even if it is displayed fleetingly on a movie screen,
> failing the "fixed" attribute. 

Film and video qualify.  Performance is an exlusive right.

You'd do yourself a favor to become aquainted with the fundamentals of
copyright law.  17 USC 101 - 122 are a good start, you can find them
here:  http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/ch1.html  I'm assuming US
law for the discussion, it covers a lot of ground in any event.

> In any case, restricting the user based on the presence of the
> software in RAM is a bad precedence for Open Source licenses to take.
> The *use* of the software should not be restricted in any way.
> Regulating it based on derivation and distribution is much better.

But grasshopper, our enemy's strength is our strength.  The same
protections and provisions which apply to proprietary software apply
equally to free software.  If in-memory operations on software were
exempted from the domain of copyright law, this would be a large hole
through which software intended to be used only with other free software
might be used otherwise.


-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself at ix.netcom.com>     http://www.netcom.com/~kmself
 Evangelist, Zelerate, Inc.                      http://www.zelerate.org
  What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?      There is no K5 cabal
   http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/        http://www.kuro5hin.org
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