On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 06:11:08PM +0200, Arnoud Galactus Engelfriet wrote: > Andrew Suffield wrote: > > On Tue, Jul 22, 2003 at 10:38:10AM +0200, Arnoud Galactus Engelfriet wrote: > > > That says that you MAY include a coypright notice as defined in > > > section 401(b). If you choose to do so, then it MUST be > > > > <snip> > > > > You're doing it too. I see no "MUST" anywhere in section 401. Please > > constrain yourself to things which are actually part of the law. > > True. It says "SHALL". USC 17 s401(b): > > If a notice appears on the copies, it shall consist of the > following three elements: > > I believe that SHALL and MUST are equivalent in meaning in English. > But technically you're right, it doesn't say "must". They are generally interpreted as having different implications; "must" is a far stronger term. > > > Now, it could be that there is some US precedent that provides > > > other reasons why a defendant's claim of innocent infringement > > > is to be given no weight. But the statute only talks about > > > 'c-in-a-circle', "Copyright" or "Copr.". > > > > However, there is no statement that forming the notice by using the > > sequence "(c)" is invalid or would not be counted as equivalent. > > If a notice appears on the copies, it shall consist of the following three > elements: > (1) the symbol ž (the letter C in a circle), or the word ''Copyright'', or Whoops, did it again. It doesn't say \236, whatever that is (doesn't look much like a circle-C in UTF-8; doesn't render _at all_ in ASCII). It has a graphic. It doesn't place any constraints on how accurately this graphic has to be reproduced. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200307/msg00250.html shows that symbol as unicode 382, "LATIN SMALL LETTER Z WITH CARON" for me. Which illustrates my point pretty well. > If the law says something shall consist of certain things, then > there is no reason to assume that something else may also > qualify. Only the notice as given in this section allows you > to get the effect of 401(d). Here's a reason: "(c)" is the closest you can get to circle-C in one-dimensional ASCII text. It's a pretty close reproduction of the symbol. > lead to Y. You seem to be arguing that a court could make up > a rule of its own regarding Z=>Y. True, I suppose. That's what > you get for living in a common law country. But the statute > only says X=>Y, and so based from the statute I can only > conclude that things other than X do not lead to Y. It is indeed the role of the courts to interpret the law according to its intent, rather than its literal wording. If the law were interpreted according to its literal wording, then we would not need the judicial system; we could leave the job to a computer. > Now, I wouldn't be surprised if there was case law in the US > that provided other rules about when the court should ignore > the defendant's claim he didn't know about your copyright. > But that's not a basis in the statute. I'm interested in any binding precedent, but I can't find any. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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