Legal Brief Software Copyright Law (With due credit to M. Oppenheimer, law) (firm of Venable, Baetjer & Howard) (Summarized from Tech Journal, 12/85) Well, you've done it! Just completed getting a copy of every piece of software ever issued...126 diskbanks full, not counting the stuff in the closet and under the bed. As you sit down to await the next release, you notice the headlines in the local paper about latest BBS and its members being crashed...amongst the other "crimes" was possession of illegally copied software....something about violation of the Copyright Act. All is not lost....even the American Bar Association can't come to an agreement. In fact, the ABAecently issued an advisory report on software copyright law and the only conclusion they could agree on was that "the issues are so complex a consensus cannot be reached...." So the next time you sit now to play SKYFOX (six months before its public release!) consider the following issues: Issue #1: The first sale doctrine....Section 109 of the Copyright Act permits the owner (you do buy only original software, don't you?) of a copyrighted product to dispose of it as he chooses. The purchaser of a copy of a book can decide to read, lend, sell, rent or throw it away. Section 109 likewise directly applies to software! Issue #2: The meaning of copying a computer program,art 1.... Under some interpretations of the Copyright Act, the loading of program into memory is deamed to create a copy.....in which case the general copyright law prohibition of copying would be violated! Simple translation: Loading a program from disk into RAM memory can be considered an illegal act! Issue #3: The meaning of copying a computer program, part 2....In legal terms, all those BBS's you d/l from are considered to be "Local Area Networks", or LANs for short. Section 117 of the Copyright Act authorizes thereation of a copy (or adaption!) of a computer program as "an essential step in the utilization of a computer program....". The placement of such copies on LANS is not forbidden under the copyright law! Issue #4: Reverse engineering.....The Copyright Act presently allows for the user of a software program to disassemble, decompile, print or to try any other form of what is referred to as reverse engineering. Section 117 of the Copyright Act as been legally held to "...provide that there is a type of 'fair use' for software buyers such that they can take steps to understand the inner workings of software in order to make adaptions..." This is the reason more and more warez houses are going to what are called license arrangements, e.g. ....purchase of this software grants a license to the user to only use it, not copy, dissassemble, etc. The ABA's view of such arrangements is that ...." many of these arrangements are through self-executing licenses of questionable enforceability." Issue #5: The famous copyright symbol.....For some reason, computer companies have not included a key that produces the standard c in-a-circle copyright symbol. Typing the word "copyright" is simple enough, but compliance with international law requires the symbol instead of the word! Issue #6: Copyright and trade secrecy.....This one is a bit complicated..basically the 1976 Federal Copyright Act preempted state laws dealing with similar protections. The legal argument here is that the Federal law also did away with state trade secret laws. The reason this is protection for both.....sorry BORLAND....that's a no, no....) CONCLUSION: ----------- The present copyright law is so rife with ambiguities that you can drive a computer through it. Happy Torts The Hoppist 12/24/85 Read:(1-27,^26),? :  .