Attn: Gordon: Your "Electronics for Dummies"

Yes, "considered."

"educational" is a very slippery word, there is no institutional requirement that I am aware of.

Why? People have the right to teach themselves.

I have had to study a *lot* of IP crap the last few years. In much of this discussion, I am playing devil's advocate, but I am *very* concerned about intellectual property law running crazy.

Then I applaud you! I don't know anyone else that doesn't have an unregistered copy of WinZip or something on their machine.

Again, good for you, you lead an honest life. Did you ever see "Dogma?" Loki won't kill you.

Assuming, of course, that you don't have devices or programs purchased before the JPEG patent was announced or were produced without paying royalties. Have you actually verified that you are in compliance? It is probably impossible to know for sure.

You would know because it wasn't there.

Yes, yes, "illegally," sure, everyone breaks the law every day doing something: littering, speeding, saying curse words in public, eating peanuts in church, or thousands of other "important" laws. It is impossible in the U.S.A. to go 24 hours and NOT break the law in some way. Some things are more illegal than others. Typically, though not always, the important measure is "harm" in the choice of enforcement.

That's because of the physical property of matter having to be in only one place at a time. That is an artifact of an old process of using chemicals to stain dead trees. Sooner or later, human kind will abandon such antiquated practices.

Then what? When there is no more physical media to regulate usership. The IP movement in this country sees this inevitable change as a gold rush!!! What happens when you have a book and you can't re-read it or loan it or sell it? What of "fair use" then?

Why? Why is that allowed? Is it property or not? If it is property, I should have the right to do with it as I please, if it is not property, then it is governed by a set of rules that attempt to mimic property, and in a democracy those rules are subject to the people.

Why does a software published have the RIGHT to define, beyond copyright and "fair use" what I can do with something I purchased?

Think about "copyright agreement" in the sense of property. If I buy a book shelf, do I not have the right to first sale? Do I not have the right to do with it as I please? Can I not lend it to whom ever I want? Why is media or software treated differently? Why is a bookshelf different from the book?

These are serious questions that very large companies are working hard to answer, and not in yours or my best interest.

This is a semantic argument, but I've been having these discussions for well over a decade now and this is based on long standing legal advice.

When you sell software, you are assigning or conveying a license to someone else for compensation. Unless you are the author, you have no right to do any such thing. GPL software is available to anyone who abides by the GPL and the GPL states that you are not legally permitted to re-license the software.

You have every right to sell the CD on which the software is recorded. You have every right to copyright an aggregation of GPL packages. You have every right to sell the boxes in which your CD with your copyrighted aggregation is transferred.

You do not, however, have the right to sell GPL software of which you are not the author because you don't own it.

Practically speaking, there is very little differences in our position. I may sell a CD of gimp, debian, firefox, and other packages as "MLW's Backoffice Powerpack" for $199 at retail outlets, but I am selling the package and my work in creating it, but it can not be said that I am selling the software I did not write because it is not mine.

Technically speaking, the positions are hugely different.

What is or is not protected by copyright is a crap shoot these days. It is a dangerous world right now if you are in the "creation" business.

For copyright, it is "expression," not implementation.

I don't have any "copied" software either. And who needs WinZip when XP comes with a folder zipping function?

You can sell, loan, or burn your books. No one will stop you. You just can't make copies of your books and give them away to other people. WHY this is such a hard concept for some people I do not know. Except in narrow circumstances, only the copyright holder has the right to make copies. "Copy" and "right"...hmmmmmm.

There is one notable exception to the notion of being able to do whatever you want with a book. Now that the US recognizes the Berne Convention, authors maintain a moral copyright in addition to a legal copyright. It means you cannot sully the work of an author in a revised edition (exceptions: clearly recognizable satire, etc.), remove the author's name from the work, add your name to the work, or do anything else that reduces the right of the artist to be identified with the original work. The concept of moral copyright is not new, though it's relatively new to the US. It goes back to the mid 19th century.

-- Gordon

I'm not trying to be a smart-ass, but everyone I know personally has something. I'm very much surprised.

The context of my paragraph was about software, oddly enough, I was poetic about the "bookshelf" and the "book," oh well, just confusing I guess.

But, my friend, what happens when a book is no longer made from dead trees?

From a legal or moral standpoint nothing, because either way you're copying what someone wrote down. You're not doing it to make more blank pieces of dead trees.

If you're saying that because technology now makes it easy to make copies, you're correct. If you're saying there are people who think nothing of copying something and getting copies of something, you are also correct. They're doing it to avoid paying for something they know is not free, and in the end, we'll ALL pay for it. There will be copy protection on everything, and DRM will severely restrict fair use. Because people abused copying, things will get to a point where you won't even be able to loan your legitimate electronic copy of The Da Vinca Code to someone. Only you, the original buyer, will have access to it.

-- Gordon

I want to say something, and it is more of a philosophy point of view than purely a legal one. I'm a huge fan of Benjamin Franklin, and I think he had a lot of insights and ideas that are lost on most people. High schools didn't do this man justice and few people take the time to understand what he wrote. Anyway, to paraphrase.

The problem with copyright and creative works, and I believe this includes software, is that it is not purely property. You can never take it out of the mind of the user.

A physical object, say a hammer, I can lend a person, he or she may use it for a period of time, and then, when it is returned, it can no longer perform the work for which it was intended.

Copyrighted works can never be removed from a persons mind. Ideas and facts and images stay. We can continually draw from them. When we learn something from them, or alter our thinking because of them, they become part of us. Eventually, if the copyrighted work becomes important, it becomes part of society. It, itself, becomes too important to be controlled by a single entity. This is the reason for the public domain.

Have you ever read Philip K. Dick's short story "Paycheck?"

The never ending quest to keep mickey mouse permanently and forever out of the public domain has hurt society, IMHO. (as well as the opinions of a lot of people)

The big picture here is copying. Copyrighted works are always copied in the minds of everyone that uses them. Ideas, thoughts, and facts are used all the time. Computer interfaces we "learn," or new ways of doing things. We have to let go of this anal fear of copying and realize that, for the better of society, as they say, that horse has left the barn.

As a part time author, I too have lost income because of the economic challenges of publishing, but I realize that it has to be and we have to challenge things like DRM and new more restrictive laws to protect the public domain for generations to come.

The problem isn't controlling copying and making it a crime or impossible, but to derive income from it. Make it easier/value added to return to the original source. Our current system for compensating artists is not that old, I don't think it needs to be set in stone. It is only in the last couple centuries that content creators could even make money selling their works. More often than not, it was merely work for hire.

In 50 or 100 years from now, what survives as literature when we no longer use dead trees? What happens to great works that are locked up in DRM and the keys are long lost? What happens to history?

Not to sound melodramatic, but this is the first time in human history where we may start reversing the longevity of history. Until this point in time, writings and art we intended to be immortal, testaments to the time and the peoples that created them. Sure, there is always some profit motive, but the work survives. Very soon now, with DRM and laws, maintaining history is will become illegal or impossible. Libraries being limited to what they can share. User's unable to lend books. It is a dangerous time, and we are losing truly important rights for mere money.

When they perfect Vulcan mind melds I guess copyright holders will feel emperiled, but until then I guess "copying to one's mind" is a colorful though not very accurate way to describe learning. I know few people who can read something and then make an exact duplicate of it, or would bother if they could. What a person takes away from learning about anything, from any source, is uniquely theirs. Obviously, copyright has nothing to do with people retaining what they've learned.

-- Gordon

Come on Gordon, there was a lot more point in my post than that one sentence out of context!

"The big picture here is copying. Copyrighted works are always copied in the minds of everyone that uses them. Ideas, thoughts, and facts are used all the time. Computer interfaces we "learn," or new ways of doing things. We have to let go of this anal fear of copying and realize that, for the better of society, as they say, that horse has left the barn."

To me the whole point of "learning = copying" is so specious I didn't feel the need to respond point by point. There is nothing even remotely like copying when someone learns something, as the learning process involves integrating new information with existing information, producing a result unique to each individual. Absolutely not like copying. What people learn from a book are ideas and facts, and you know neither is copyrightable. They do not "copy" the text into their brains, and the vast majority cannot remember the word-for-word sequence that is the subject of copyrightability.

-- Gordon

You are being far to literal.

While you're exactly right on this, there have been some lawsuits (including one against google) claiming that copying data from disk to the CPU to manipulate it is "copying" in the sense copyright guards against.

It is the meaning that is copied not the carrier of that meaning.

Where did you get the information for your book? If I had the same sources that you used to get that information I wouldn't need to read your book any more than you would.

There is an important role for those who can translate technical text into a simpler form for those who haven't the time to become experts in a particular field. Some translate for love, some for money.

In an ideal situation, if there is nothing really creative in the ideas written, the translator should at least get a fixed one off payment. Still if a lot of people want to read your works... The author of the Harry Potter series seemed to do ok. What would have happened if her works were copied over the web before she sold any of her books?

-- JC

Copyright has NEVER applied to ideas ("meaning"), so it's pointless to argue this.

I synergized what I learned, with prior facts and experiences that are unique to me. I wrote those down, creating a unique expression of those ideas. When you read the book you'll do the same. What you take from the book will be UNIQUE to you, and you alone. Your learning is not a copy of the text, but an experience as unique as a fingerprint.

Sigh. I'll repeat this once more: COPYRIGHT DOES NOT PROTECT IDEAS. Never has, never will, doesn't need to. Clear now?

-- Gordon

I wasn't writing about copyright the reference was to mlw's comment that it was copied to the brain. It wasn't about laws, morals or ethics.

I know they say that "ideas" are not subject to copyright.

Even so I notice that a house design is subject to copyright and I would say putting the kitchen there and the lounge here is an idea. So I guess it also depends what you decide the word "idea" means.

Another example are algorithms. I would say that if I came up with a new algorithm it would be a new "idea" but subject to copyright.

Mmmm. Ok :)

Information exists not in the things but in the arrangement of those things. Gordon's book has value because of the arrangement, which is distinct from and additional to the source material he drew on. His copyright extends to his arrangement of the source material, and not to the source material itself.

But perhaps that's what you're both saying?

My post was really only with regard to mlw's comment "Copyrighted works are always copied in the minds of everyone that uses them."

It wasn't meant to be about Gordon or his excellent books as such.

I accept Gordon's take that an author synergizes what they have learned, with prior facts and experiences that are unique to them and that constitutes an origonal and creative work.

I haven't seen Gordon's "Electronics for Dummies" but it was what I felt was missing from his "The Robot Builder's Bonanza". If the work is useful enough for anyone to want to copy it, it is worth paying for. Unfortunately most people believe stealing is ok as long as you can get away with it and those that produce the goods have to find some way of preventing it from happening.

-- JC

Gordon is right about "ideas" not being subject to copyright. A computer algorithm is an idea of "process" and thus can not be copyrighted.

In IP Law: Copyright protects the expression of ideas. Patents protect processes Trademark law protects symbols of companies, Tony The Tiger, etc. Trade Secret protect those materials, ideas, expressions, etc. that are held secret by their holders.

A computer algorithm gained the ability to be patented in the 1980s.

There is a lot of work being done by some very bad lawyers to expand copyright to cover more abstract aspects of an expression, i.e. form and structure, methods and concepts, etc.

An idea has to be an idea about something which would make that something copyright be it a process or anything else. Clearly there is something I am missing here.

The only socially responsible and useful role of a patent is to allow people to be adequately rewarded for their contribution and it ideally needs to be commensurate to the worth of that contribution. In practice it is all about politics, power and control.

-- JC

Two people can come up with the exact same idea. For copyrights, it's not the idea, but how the idea is expressed, that makes it special. So, maybe I have an idea about creating a robot that runs on burps from Dr. Pepper. Someone else might come up with the same. We can both write about the idea, and we can both have our work copyrighted.

For a patent you can protect the idea, but the idea has to be pass certain requirements of being novel, useful, and non-obvious. A copyright can protect something brand new, or something dull, useless, and so obvious a two year old could think of it.

*Everything* is about politics, power, and control. We all long for a little bit more than we already have.

We should probably get back to building 'bots now. I have an idea for one that uses carbonation from a certain fruity soda pop...

-- Gordon

That is what sparked my interest in robots as a kid. Something to do my chores for me. Reminds me of the Roomba TV advertisement where the wife says, "I love my Roomba but I have control", or words to that effect as she waves her remote control about.

Hey! Sorry. I have already had that idea and I want to patent it :-)

-- John