Date   : Tue, 16 Nov 2010 05:57:36 +0100
From   : rick@... (Rick Murray)
Subject: Beeb Networking - and another thing

On 16/11/2010 02:01, Farlie A wrote:

> Provided there were some checks to ensure 'copyright' material that
> wasn't the uploader's to share was denied of course?

Given the extremely messy situation of the copyright, it might be better 
to be more reactive than proactive.

If you have any doubts, just start a thread asking about who actually 
owns the copyright in the Acorn 8 bit stuff. I do, more or less once a 
year. The answer is the same, a bit of waffle followed by a bit of Pace 
owns it, Castle owns it, my best mate's uncle owns it - but for the 
moment the most *likely* and realistic bet is that Pace probably owns it 
but that is not certain. And given this mess, there is no way in hell 
the Acorn 8 bit code will ever be released into the public domain as it 
would require Pace to throw expensive legal time into assuring they 
really do own it in order to say "here, you can pass it around". This is 
madness, sure, but it works to our benefit to, as anybody wishing to 
claim copyright will need to go through the same hoops... for what? to 
protect some ROM images nearly three decades old with zero commercial 
value? Ain't gonna happen. There's no money to be made, so the situation 
as I see it for the future is that it'll just be ignored, by everybody. 
We, this, our group... not large enough to represent a threat to 
anything, and by and large dealing with software so ancient that not 
only have the original source codes (and the discs they're stored on) 
expired, in some cases so too have the authors.

This leaves us with two options:

   1. Reactive. Post stuff. If there is a complaint, apologise, take it
      down, cancel the offending user's account, claim DCMA Safe Harbor.

   2. Proactive. No copyright infringement will be tolerated, every
      upload must be tagged as your own work and this will be verified.


Which will lead us with two outcomes:

   1. People upload stuff. Most of it is not theirs. Nobody cares. Look
      at the various sites hosting ROM images and slans/OCRs of user
      guides. Exactly which part of any of that is not covered by
      copyright? But, how many complaints and takedowns are received?
      I'll tell you what, if I had written a ROM image and it was on
      nv-whatsit or mdfs.net, I would be pretty damn pleased it was
      still floating around and not consigned to the great bit-bucket in
      the sky. Some people don't see it like that, but I find it
      extremely hard to imagine anybody can suffer "loss" for something
      they've probably not thought about for two *decades*.
      [of course, there is more recent legit BBC software, but that will
       be known to this group]

   2. An empty harddisc regards
      Data passing by
      On a journey somewhere else

      [Rick, 2010/11/16, 05h56]


Best wishes,

Rick.

-- 
Rick Murray, eeePC901 & ADSL WiFI'd into it, all ETLAs!
BBC B: DNFS, 2 x 5.25" floppies, EPROM prog, Acorn TTX
E01S FileStore, A3000/A5000/RiscPC/various PCs/blahblah...