John Hasler wrote:
If you give or sell me a copy of a work of yours I own that copy and can do
as I please with it (that includes running it if it is a computer program)
with no need for a license. However, copyright law forbids me to make and
distribute copies of it without your permission.
Feel free to feel bound and to limit your own freedom if you so choose.
It's a self-imposed limitation in the case of my example of
non-licensed, non-attributed code that I typed into the mailing list.
Code is protected by copyright by default and may not be copied and
distributed without permission of the copyright owner.
If you feel you need to follow that law in every circumstance, go right
ahead. Breaking copyright in the case of someone releasing something
without a license appears to be a victim-less crime.
Thus, copyright in the real world only matters if the author chooses to
exercise it.
By your definition, you could have hit reply with quoting turned on in
your MUA to my code example I sent -- and then you would have been a law
breaker!
I could start sprinkling code into my signature line and then sue
everyone who quotes it on a mailing list? Yeah, right. It'd actually
be fun to see someone try that and see how far it got in the legal system.
I continue to contend that if you put it up in public (not private,
there are differences there) for anyone to see, and it has no license or
stated Copyright -- you'll have no leg to stand on if you attempted to
take that to a court to enforce copyright later. No matter how the law
is written, no Judge with half a brain cell operating would allow me to
sue you for hitting "reply" and "copying" my code.
Therefore the most effective way to "share" code with absolutely zero
encumbrances, is simply to post it somewhere in public, and to force
people to grow up and make their own decisions about whether or not they
wish to copy it and use it. No license required.
Copyright may be automatic, but doesn't apply unless the author chooses
to enforce it. And by posting it in public, they've taken all their own
teeth out if they were ever dumb enough to try to retroactively enforce
it later on.
Nate
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