Question of basic rights

[John Cowan]

James Michael DuPont scripsit:

> My question is, is there a basic right under US law to be able to
> create dervied works of software? 

There is indeed such a right, and it is possessed by the author of the
original and whomever he licenses and nobody else.

> Lets say, considering a posting of source code to a mailing list, with
> no statement of licensing implied or asked, is there any right another
> person has to read that, edit it, modify it and publish derived works?

Read it?  Yes.  The others?  Almost certainly not.  (No court has actually
ruled that a modified computer program is a derivative work, but I think it
would be perverse to withhold provisional assent to that proposition.)

> Are there any freedoms that can be seen as given unless the person
> enters an agreement that is designed to take that freedom away?

You have the freedom to do anything but make copies, distribute copies,
make derivative works, publicly display the work, or publicly perform it.
Even then there are certain exceptions: you may make modifications to
the work as necessary to adapt it to your own computer, and you may make
copies or derivative works within the bounds of fair use, a deliberately
undefined term.  You may commit the work to memory, or (most scurvily)
use its ideas in your own code with no attribution whatsoever.

I am not a lawyer; this is not legal advice.

-- 
Business before pleasure, if not too bloomering long before.
        --Nicholas van Rijn
                John Cowan <jcowan at reutershealth.com>
                        http://www.ccil.org/~cowan  http://www.reutershealth.com
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