On 12/01/2015 7:52 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
On 2015-12-01 16:49, John Robertson wrote:
On 11/28/2015 3:41 PM, Mouse wrote:
Love that term, "bounce buffer" (I wrote a whole package to support
them in a packet switch I did) - I'm officially adopting it, right
now! :-)
Hey - anything that anyone writes is automatically copyrighted.
I realize you...may have been less than entirely serious. But what you
wrote could easily be taken seriously, especially by someone only
partially inside our culture. So I'm going to be a minor killjoy here.
Yes, anything written now is automatically copyrighted in most
jursidctions. But (a) the term "bounce buffer" is small enough and
obvious enough it probably cannot be copyrighted on its own (and is not
infringing when copied in isolation), (b) was quite possibly published
without copyright claim before automatic copyright and is thus in the
public domain now, and (c) is of uncertain authorship anyway. So...
So first you need permission to use that!
...you actually don't.
/~\ The ASCII Mouse
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Further to this discussion on 'automatic' copyright. That only came into
being in 1989 - prior to that ALL documents had to have either the
symbol (c) or the word COPYRIGHT as well as the name of the person or
organization on the document (if a single page) or the front page or the
index page. This was true for the period prior to 1978, however during
the period 1978 through 1989 you had up to five years to copyright the
document, otherwise it passed into public domain.
https://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm
One could trademark an expression 'bounce buffer', however as Mouse
points out you can't exactly copyright it.
And all of these commands are only relevant if you are in the US. Much
of the rest of the world signed the Berne convention long before that.
Johnny
Or if you are dealing with documents published only in the United
States. As the US did not adhere to the Berne convention until 1989 many
products are public domain.
I also don't know what the situation is in the Berne convention with
respect to corporate ownership of copyrights (works for hire). Here in
Canada such corporate rights do not exist - the creator of the document
is the holder of the copyright.
My point was that depending on when the document was published in the US
it may (or may not) be public domain if at the time of publishing it had
the then required Copyright symbol or word.
John :-#)#
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