Re: Implied vs. explicit copyright

[Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net>]

Scripsit Joel Baker <fenton@debian.org>

> Even if I'm right, "fairly close" does not necessarily mean "identical",
> and, frankly, I think the whole thing is getting a bit silly. Having (c) in
> there might, or might not, be considered "circle in a C" if you have only
> ASCII to work with, by some court. Lots of arguments would be given, and
> (in most US courts) someone would buy whichever verdict helped them most.

In any case, it seems (from the statute quotes that have appeared
here) that the c-in-a-circle does not *materially* affect the
copyright protection enjoyed by the work. Even if we, for the sake of
the argument, assume that "(c)" is not construed to be an instance of
the symbol that the law speaks about, the only consequence of this is
that the defendant gets a chance to *try* to convince that court that
he honestly did not know at all that the work was protected by
copyright. I still think it would be hard for the defendant to
convince a court that he was ignorant of the *de facto* convention
that people put "(c)" in computer programs to assert their copyright.

-- 
Henning Makholm                        "Kurt er den eneste jeg kender der er
                           *dum* nok til at gå i *ring* på et jernbanespor."