[vox-tech] Copyright and license

[Richard Harke]

On Sunday 23 January 2005 13:02, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> Suppose someone writes a useful document.  They put a copyright notice onto
> the document, but no license.  They put it on the web, for free, and it
> stays there for years.  At some point I download a copy of that document.
> The *intention* (although not explicitly stated) is for people to download
> the document and play around with it (the document in question is an OpenGL
> programming tutorial).
>
> Now suppose they decide to make money off the document, so they set up a
> commerce site and charge for access to that document.
>
> Am I allowed to give my copy of the document, from when it was freely
> available off the web, to somebody?
>
> Am I now obligated to delete the document off my hard drive?
>
> Pete
Lawyers will making bundles of money off questions like this. I'm not
a lawyer, however. The answer to the second question seems clear.
If a publisher gave away free copies of a book, they couldn't demand them
back because they ran short and now could sell them. And publishers do
often give away free copies.
The first questions seems less certain. By the same analogy, if you gave your
copy to a friend and deleted your own copy, that would be completely OK.
If you keep your copy while giving a copy to a friend seems marginal. On the 
other hand, if it is just for his/her personal use, I wouldn't worry about 
it.
Also, the publisher may well have added to the original when they made it
a commercial product. Then you could argue that it is not the same
document anyway.
We see beta software stay in circulation even after the release version
is out.
Richard Harke