Re: Copyright? What is that?

[Sudhakar Chandrasekharan <thaths@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Manoj Victor Mathew proclaimed:
> I have some questions regarding legal aspects of distributing programs
> written by me.
> 
> * What is a Copyright? How can I obtain a Copyright for my program?

Copyright laws vary from country to country.  Furthermore, many countries
have copyright laws that just don't make sense in the internet age.  And
there are laws and then there are laws, if you know what I mean (eg. Disney
made Congress pass a special rule about the trademarking / copyright of the
Disney names effectively giving Disney a few more decades of control of the
character names which were about to become part of the public domain).

So the answer to your question is "It depends".  Usually, it is enough to
just add a copyright notice to your work to make it copyrighted.  Also have
proof that you indeed developed the work in question if you ever need to go
to court.

> * What does the label 'Copyright 19xx SomeName' mean?

Read http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html and
http://www.templetons.com/brad/copyright.html

This note (Copyright (C) 19XX Name of Person) is considered to be legal
expression of ownership of intellectual property in many countries.

> * What must I do to distribute my programs under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC
> LICENCE.

Read  http://www.fsf.org/copyleft/gpl.html#SEC4 
All you have to do is include the COPYING file and include a note in your
program (see above URL) pointing to this note.

>         The file COPYING distributed with all GPL programs, says about
> 'Copyright disclaimer'. Is it necessary that I include a Copyright
> disclaimer along with my programs, 

Absolutely!  That disclaimer is essential.  People who write and sell /
distribute software could be sued if the software crashes and burns the
users computer.  This disclaimer is your way of protecting yourself from
being sued.  BTW, this kind of disclaimer is not specific to Free / Open
software.  Even commercial software have licensing terms that say that you
cannot hold the maker of the software responsible for anything that might
go wrong because of using their product (including and not limited to lost
documents, computer crashes, computer vanishing into a black hole etc.).

Whether all of these disclaimers are actually legally valid is a totally
different question.  The software companies, more accurately the army of
lawyers of the software corporation behemouth, love protecting their own
hinds.

> assuming I use at least some services at my college to write/test my
> program?

Talk to the people in your college.  Many colleges do not have a problem
with this.  Some colleges, especially if you are developing stuff using
their resources and are being paid to do so, prefer owning the copyright. 
Universitites like Stanford and Berkeley have been pretty lax with the
copyright of software developed there.  The University of Illionois,
Urbana-Chaimpaigne and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications
(NCSA) on the other hand, was pretty moronic about its ownership of the
Mosaic code and was totalitarian in its control.


Thaths
PS: IANAL
- -- 
"Lisa, vampires are make-belive. Just like elves, gremlins and eskimos."
                     -- Homer J. Simpson
Sudhakar C13n http://people.netscape.com/thaths/ Lead Indentured Slave
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