-=> Quoting david nugent to Paul Edwards <=-

 > They could also illegally remove my PD notice and attempt to
 > sue me. 

 dn> They can remove the notice, but if they sued you for using that work
 dn> they'd be downright stupid. It'd be laughed out of court.
 
/* WARNING: unqualified statements and personal opinions follow */

They may be downright stupid or they may be a very smart and successful
entrepreneur who doesn't mind gambling and who believes there is something
called bluffing in a poker game. The suit may be laughed outside the court,
but not out of court.

 > Actually the removing of the PD notice and putting
 > their own copyright notice in should be OK (right?), so long
 > as they don't try to sue anyone for using the original PD
 > code.

 dn> No, you cannot (legally) take and claim a copyright you don't have.
 dn> While you can remove the copyright notice with a text editor, you
 dn> cannot remove a copyright - at that point it comes down the a question
 dn> of proof as to who was the original author (or what documents the
 dn> transfer of title). Just as you cannot 'steal' intellectual property,
 dn> you cannot make a work in the public domain code 'copyrighted'. The PD
 dn> status of a work merely means that it can be used or distributed as an
 dn> individual sees fit.

Yes, it comes down to the question of proof when it goes to court. And it
may cost quite a lot to get a proof that will be accepted in court. In the
end the only winners may be the lawyers.

Let's say I was working for a big software house the scale of Borland or
Microsoft. Then one night I couldn't sleep and consequenly wrote a
wonderful piece of code. The next day I put a PD notice in the code and
released it to the network. You saw it and used it in one of your projects.
I used it in some of my contract work as well.

Since the company hired me in the first place because of my expertise, it's
very likely my PD code was useful to one of the company packages. They
decided to use the code in a new software, stripped the PD notice, put
their copyright notice there, then sued you and me.

OK. It came down to proof. They had an army of lawyers to prepare
"proof" that I wrote it in the company time. Some of my
colleagues, for personal reasons, were prepared to testify in the court
that the code was part of the company projects. I was unemployed (companies
don't normally sue current employees), you had only a one-person company
trying to survive...

Do you think we have the money to fight the law suit? How many people out
there on the net would be willing to waste their time for us? Do you think
our families would survive the battle? Our only saviour is a good lawyer
who could see a profit out of it and agreed to fight for us on a
percentage.

With too many judges who still think that domestic violence is justifiable
in some cases, I have little faith Australian courts. The situation in USA
is worse because justice has become a profitable business. We can forget
the countries where intellectual property is not yet conceived, let alone
defined.

 dn> As I said previously, you must own title to something before you can
 dn> transfer it to someone else. That is true of chattels of all types,
 dn> including intellectual property.  Public domain does not mean
 dn> 'unowned', it means 'owned by the public' as the phrase directly
 dn> implies.

Can you or anyone verify that the above statement is true in Australian
laws, accepted by Australian judges in regard to code? How easy to prove
that a piece of code is public domain?

Until then, I continue to put a PD notice in my code, with due reservation.

Regards.


--- GEcho 1.02+