Return to BSD News archive
Received: by minnie.vk1xwt.ampr.org with NNTP id AA624 ; Sat, 06 Feb 93 04:02:21 EST Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!think.com!news!rlk From: rlk@underprize.think.com (Robert Krawitz) Newsgroups: alt.suit.att-bsdi,comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: George William Herbert's Challenge - Part 4 (copyright & derived works) Date: 3 Feb 93 22:33:55 Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge Mass., USA Lines: 75 Message-ID: <RLK.93Feb3223355@underprize.think.com> References: <106742@netnews.upenn.edu> <1993Jan27.215738.12384@igor.tamri.com> <1kbtpf$e9h@agate.berkeley.edu> <1993Feb3.175211.13214@igor.tamri.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: underprize.think.com In-reply-to: jbass@igor.tamri.com's message of Wed, 3 Feb 93 17:52:11 GMT In article <1993Feb3.175211.13214@igor.tamri.com> jbass@igor.tamri.com (John Bass) writes: In regard to derived works, standards from other parts of the publishing industries need to be examined. Take music for example. If we have a well known piece, like "Jingle Bells" and someone comes along with a tune that sounds just like it ... IE has the same rhythm and melody ... then we without question would call it a rendition of "Jingle Bells", no matter how much the author claims it to be a new piece ... even if EVERY note, EVERY chord, and every other technical description is different from the original. Borrowing themes has long been established practice in music (since well before Brahms wrote his first symphony, whose fourth movement has a main theme, and an organization, remarkably similar to that of Beethoven's ninth, and no one ever claimed that it was coincidence). Borrowing overall organization of a work has never been controversial, whether it's sonata form (which has been around for centuries), or two verses, guitar solo, and one more verse in three minutes (which has been around for decades). No matter how much the author whines, we presume that he heard it atleast once and his song was derived from the original melody. To play the song and with a striaght face call it original is plagiarizm. To play the song and introduce it as your rendition of the original is called creativity. If the original author or publisher still retains a valid copyright, then you may be able to play the tune to yourself in the privacy of your home, but to play it in public would be illegal unless you obtain the right to do so from the copyright holder. Let's get off this plagiarism issue, shall we? Plagiarism is not the issue; whether BSDI misappropriated trade secrets and/or violated copyright is the issue. If BSDI used ATT's or USL's ideas in a way that did not violate copyright, then BSDI has no legal responsibility here. This newsgroup is called alt.SUIT.att-bsdi This is the context on how to apply the scrutiny of "methodology and algorithms, including the sequence of processes adopted by the programmer" to works that are suspected of derivation. For those of you with source access, review stand & boot with this frame of mind ... nearly every line of code is different (notes & chords), but the basic design and structure (melody) remains the same. Now start reviewing other code segments of 386BSD, for we will be appling this tests over and over. No, YOU first demonstrate that basic design and structure is subject to copyright. If you can't demonstrate this, then your argument falls apart. An analogy of your argument applied to music is "I have copyright on music in four movements, the first of which is an allegro organized as exposition-development-recapitulation in two, the second of which is an adagio in four, the third of which is a minuet and trio with a repeat of the minuet, and the fourth is an allegro in two with a presto coda" (in other words, the organization of a classical sonata or symphony). Haydn wrote 104 pieces of that nature (those are just the ones for orchestra, his symphonies), and Mozart wrote 41. Funny, Haydn never sued Mozart for copyright infringement. In the academic and research community, plagiarizm is a serious issue. I hate spelling corrections, but as long as you insist on being so pedantic and so focused on the issue, please spell "plagiarism" correctly. In any event, BSDI lives by commercial rules, not academic ones. Copyright infringement is one thing. Failure to give credit that one is not legally required to give is quite another. -- ames >>>>>>>>> | Robert Krawitz <rlk@think.com> 245 First St. bloom-beacon > |think!rlk Cambridge, MA 02142 harvard >>>>>> . Thinking Machines Corp. (617)234-2116 Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- write lpf@uunet.uu.net