88 lines
3.9 KiB
Plaintext
88 lines
3.9 KiB
Plaintext
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Legal Brief
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Software Copyright Law
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(With due credit to M. Oppenheimer, law)
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(firm of Venable, Baetjer & Howard)
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(Summarized from Tech Journal, 12/85)
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Well, you've done it! Just completed getting a copy of every
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piece of software ever issued...126 diskbanks full, not counting
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the stuff in the closet and under the bed. As you sit down to
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await the next release, you notice the headlines in the local
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paper about latest BBS and its members being crashed...amongst the
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other "crimes" was possession of illegally copied
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software....something about violation of the Copyright Act.
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All is not lost....even the American Bar Association can't
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come to an agreement. In fact, the ABAecently issued an advisory
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report on software copyright law and the only conclusion they
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could agree on was that "the issues are so complex a consensus
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cannot be reached...." So the next time you sit now to play SKYFOX
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(six months before its public release!) consider the following
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issues:
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Issue #1: The first sale doctrine....Section 109 of the
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Copyright Act permits the owner (you do buy only original
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software, don't you?) of a copyrighted product to dispose of it as
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he chooses. The purchaser of a copy of a book can decide to read,
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lend, sell, rent or throw it away. Section 109 likewise directly
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applies to software!
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Issue #2: The meaning of copying a computer program,art 1....
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Under some interpretations of the Copyright Act, the loading of
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program into memory is deamed to create a copy.....in which case
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the general copyright law prohibition of copying would be
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violated! Simple translation: Loading a program from disk into
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RAM memory can be considered an illegal act!
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Issue #3: The meaning of copying a computer program, part
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2....In legal terms, all those BBS's you d/l from are considered
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to be "Local Area Networks", or LANs for short. Section 117 of the
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Copyright Act authorizes thereation of a copy (or adaption!) of a
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computer program as "an essential step in the utilization of a
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computer program....". The placement of such copies on LANS is not
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forbidden under the copyright law!
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Issue #4: Reverse engineering.....The Copyright Act presently
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allows for the user of a software program to disassemble,
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decompile, print or to try any other form of what is referred to
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as reverse engineering. Section 117 of the Copyright Act as been
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legally held to "...provide that there is a type of 'fair use' for
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software buyers such that they can take steps to understand the
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inner workings of software in order to make adaptions..." This is
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the reason more and more warez houses are going to what are called
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license arrangements, e.g. ....purchase of this software grants a
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license to the user to only use it, not copy, dissassemble, etc.
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The ABA's view of such arrangements is that ...." many of these
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arrangements are through self-executing licenses of questionable
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enforceability."
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Issue #5: The famous copyright symbol.....For some reason,
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computer companies have not included a key that produces the
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standard c in-a-circle copyright symbol. Typing the word
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"copyright" is simple enough, but compliance with international
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law requires the symbol instead of the word!
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Issue #6: Copyright and trade secrecy.....This one is a bit
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complicated..basically the 1976 Federal Copyright Act preempted
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state laws dealing with similar protections. The legal argument
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here is that the Federal law also did away with state trade secret
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laws. The reason this is protection for both.....sorry
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BORLAND....that's a no, no....)
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CONCLUSION:
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-----------
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The present copyright law is so rife with ambiguities that
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you can drive a computer through it.
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Happy Torts The Hoppist 12/24/85
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[0;33;40;1mRead:(1-27,^26),? :[0;37;40m
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