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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!mips!mips!sdd.hp.com!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!csn!raven!rcd From: rcd@raven.eklektix.com (Dick Dunn) Subject: Re: Poisoned textbooks and net articles? Message-ID: <1992Aug12.041630@eklektix.com> Organization: eklektix - Boulder, Colorado References: <1992Aug5.224337.6733@cirrus.com> <1992Aug10.225150.29474@unislc.uucp> <7154@skye.ed.ac.uk> Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1992 04:16:30 GMT Lines: 26 jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes: >> Of course, there are some folks out there >>that contend that if you release a piece of software to the net, you in >>effect place it in the public domain, but I don't believe a judge would buy >>that argument. .... >Well, just when _are_ we allowed to use information we read in books >or on the net? And what's the point of reading these things if the >answer is "never"? How much does copyright restrict us?... >any point in reading books, for instance?) This digresses a bit from BSD to "intellectual property" stuff, but it's worth knowing, given (as others have pointed out) the large amount of published material on BSD systems. Copyright protects the form of expression. It explicitly does *not* protect ideas or information. (Patents protect ideas; that's not at issue here.) So, for example, the copyright on a textbook protects the par- ticular presentation of ideas, concepts, and facts. You can use the ideas and the information in a textbook; you can't (for example) copy the way they're explained. (This is, of course, a non-legalese, simplified explanation.) -- Dick Dunn rcd@raven.eklektix.com -or- raven!rcd Boulder, Colorado Cats!