*BSD News Article 3943


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From: leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd,misc.legal.computing
Subject: Re: Poisoned textbooks and net articles?
Message-ID: <1992Aug20.085817.5749@qiclab.scn.rain.com>
Date: 20 Aug 92 08:58:17 GMT
Article-I.D.: qiclab.1992Aug20.085817.5749
References: <1992Aug5.224337.6733@cirrus.com> <1992Aug10.225150.29474@unislc.uucp> <7154@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Reply-To: 70465.203@compuserve.com
Organization: SCN Research/Qic Laboratories of Tigard, Oregon.
Lines: 30

jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:

>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?  (Is there
>any point in reading books, for instance?)

>I'm not trying to disagree with you here -- I'd like to know the
>answers to these questions, and I'm starting to worry about what
>the answers might turn out to be.

>A lot of people buy books in order to learn more about how to
>write programs.  These books are copyrighted.  Do we have to
>artificially skew our code so that we don't use exactly the
>same technique we read about or what?

You are confusing copyright and patent. You can use *all* the info
you want from a copyrighted work. If you *copy* sections of
it with only minor changes, you are violating copyright. Using
the *techniques* is not covered. 

You *might* run into trouble if it could be shown that your stuff
was a "derivative work". I'm not really sure what the law says
there.

-- 
Leonard Erickson		      leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com
CIS: [70465,203]			 70465.203@compuserve.com
FIDO:   1:105/51	 Leonard.Erickson@f51.n105.z1.fidonet.org
(The CIS & Fido addresses are preferred)