Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Serious breach of copyright -- First post

[David Hoffman]

On 6/18/06, David Hoffman <zionicman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/18/06, Dennis Olvany <dennisolvany at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > >> ...facts are not eligible for copyright.
> >
> > > I'm afraid you're incorrect.  The work in question is indeed
> > copyrightable
> > > under the Berne Convention, which many countries have ratified,
> > including
> > > the United States, where the content is hosted.  The United States, as
> > well
> > > as many other countries, also have national laws which allow this work
> > > to be
> > > copyrighted.
> >
> > At best, the article may be considered a derivative work of the
> > described software/hardware and therefore the intellectual property of
> > the respective manufacturers.
> >
>
>
> First you say only 'literary or artistic' works, and not 'facts' (hint:
> the article was more than just facts), are elligible for copyright, and now
> you say that, not only are 'facts' elligible for copyright, but that they
> hold such a strong copyright that works which refer to facts published
> elsewhere are necessarily derivative and are not elligible for a seperate
> copyright by the writer.  Which is it?  You can't have both.  And, really,
> you can't have either:  there are a multitude of works that are 'derivative'
> in the sense you describe, yet hold perfectly valid copyrights.  Don't
> believe me?  Try hosting a bunch of O'Reilly books on a site hosted in a
> country that respects copyright.
>
> Now, even if you're correct that Brett doesn't have a valid copyright
> (which he does) and that unspecified entities unknown own the copyright to
> the article (which they don't), we still have the same problem:  FreeBSD
> claiming to own something they don't, and not even attributing it to its
> true authors.
>