[Ernie the Attorney] QUOTE
By the way, his article is copyrighted. That means you can read it, examine the ideas, and discuss them with your friends. You can't reproduce his words in any significant part without permission from him. That's the way copyright works. Pretty much only he is allowed to make money off of his words, but you can examine them if you'd like.
UNQUOTE [Ernie the Attorney]
Do we need enhanced multi-author derivative copyrights? Here are some cases to illustrate my meaning.
A non-profit club newsletter is copyrighted. After publication, copyrights revert to individual authors. How is someone to know that is the situation if they want to reprint something? Safety is to see permission from both individual article writer and editor publisher.
Similar situation with Internet discussion group. You want to reprint something, and keep it legal. Is the copyright that of the individual person who posted what you want to reprint, or the owner moderator of the discussion. Like the club newsletter, it appears shared. This is obvious when there are multiple people writing into the discussion you want to reprint. Copyright is shared by all the contributors.
There are many analogies in other kinds of copyrighted material.
- Someone creates a copyrighted work.
- Second person adds to it.
- The addition is also copyrighted.
- You cannot use the second piece without also using the first piece.
- Examples
- Software Package or structure developed.
- Additional programmers add additional features to the core application.
- End users can't use the new features independently of the original art.
- They can run the original without the new features, but they want the enhancements.
- Original package can compete better in the market place, if it is enhancement-friendly.
- In other words, the original copyright holder makes things easy for people to improve the product.
- Music or Poetry
- May other people add verses beyond what the original artist composed?
- The original artist might think some parody demeans their work.
- Original artist may demand approval before add on person's stuff is published.
- Game Design purchased by many enthusiasts who meet to play and discuss.
- Some players add new rules, scenarios, variants to enhance their enjoyment.
- They publish their suggested improvements and try out other people's ideas.
- Part of the fun of the game is figuring out how to grow it from the basic original.
- Fact Essay
- Commentary, more opinions by other people.
- May in fact be hostile counter point to original author.
- Novel creates a set of characters in a universe or reality.
- Another author writes a sequel.
- I think the new author needs permission from whoever created the story universe.
- Not copyright law, but publishers seeking to avoid any lawsuits.
Compare result of rules imposed by original copyright owner on people who would add to their software creation worlds.
Microsoft is somewhat Open to anyone writing any software that will run on their Operating Systems, but it is Open Season on what will continue to work. In any future MS upgrade, surprise, MS changed the standards, now something that worked on the old MS version does not work on the new, and it may be that only parts of an application got broke. So for the end users, things are fragile, and we do not know why collisions are occurring between parts of our PC software. For the developers in the MS world, it is like quicksand, the foundations, that you build your applications upon, are at risk of collapsing under you without warning.
IBM is somewhat Open to anyone writing any software that will run on their Operating Systems, but IBM imposes rigid standards. IBM guarantees to their customers that any software written by an approved vendor will not break their computer. Everything will run fine, or we will fix it (IBM and the software vendor), guaranteed. What is an approved vendor? One that obeys IBM's standards.
Now there are vendors out there that break IBM's standards. IBM warns its customers. If you install that vendor's stuff on your IBM computer, then your IBM contract is null and void. If it breaks, we won't fix it, unless you agree to have that vendor's stuff removed from the computer.
Do new upgrades of IBM operating systems drop support for stuff that was in earler versions. Yes, but they announce in advance to their approved vendors what aspects are going away, so that the vendors know what to re-write, and the customers are given a list of what will no longer work, so they have choice of not doing the upgrade, or replacing the software.
It is a different world, and it is governed by the behavior of the original copyright owner, within framework of what the government allows, to permit other developers to add to their worlds, and set rules for the additions.
2:03:03 PM
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