RE: Copyright [cgf, please comment]

[Suhaib Siddiqi <ssiddiqi at inspirepharm dot com>]

> > 
> > Suhaib
> 
> This *was* sent as a personal message to Suhaib, but since he
> apparently prefers a public forum I will oblige him. (Please feel
> free to reply to me personally rather than the list, as this
> really has very little use to the general population)

There are others then you poping up of whos messages I have not seen
on the list before.  So I wonder it is something to annoy?



again copyright is really not an issue, but since you insists, read this
from copyright laws from Library of Congress.  FAQ is an invention.  It is a
collective work.

* The authors of a joint work are co-owners of the copyright in the work,
unless there is an agreement to the contrary.

FAQ in SGML is a DOC and collection of work. therefore it does not grant
copyright:

*Mere ownership of a book, manuscript, painting, or any other copy or
phonorecord does not give the possessor the copyright. The law provides that
transfer of ownership of any material object that embodies a protected work
does not of itself convey any rights in the copyright. 


Bye

Suhaib


> 
> <http://www.loc.gov/copyright/circs/circ1.html#wnp>
> 
> "WHAT IS NOT PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT? ... Ideas, procedures,
> methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles, discoveries,
> or devices, as distinguished from a description, explanation, or
> illustration"
> 
<http://www.loc.gov/copyright/title17/92chap1.html#101>,
Definitions, "derivative work"

   A "derivative work" is a work based upon one or more
   preexisting works, such as ... abridgment, condensation,
   or any other form in which a work may be recast,
   transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial
   revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications,
   which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship,
   is a "derivative work".

Assuming Harold's claim of writing from scratch is true, his
document is obviously not a derivative work. Again: The questions
that need to be covered by the FAQ, and the informational content
of the answers is *not* copyrightable.

Please present sources more specific than the complete text of
the US Copyright legislation and a badly written personal attack.
(Try not to make grammatical errors when talking about "people
who think they know everything and know nothing")

I contribute quite routinely to open-source projects covered
under the GPL, and copyrighted by some random original programmer
(often not the current maintainer). I see absolutely no reason
that a project needs a single global copyright sticker, as the
GNU licenses guarantee freedom to the users of the code/document.

Chris

~~~~~~
Lawyer? No, literate.