From: lance@csd.mot.com (lance.norskog)
Subject: Re: Postings on sci.virtual-worlds and Copyright Protection
Date: Wed, 7 Aug 91 15:33 PDT



[ Sorry I missed the BOF.  Actually not sorry.  Mad. 

[I drove from the Bay Area, in the maiden road trip of my
pre-owned Fiat Spider.  The legal whorehouse on the way back
was interesting too.  I have the T-shirt to prove it. ]

My understanding is that the USA is now a signatory to the Berne
Convention, which means that whatever a US citizen (and most non-USA
citizens) creates is "born copyrighted".  Finding one's verbiage in
a journal or book without attribution is not a "strange experience";
it is theft, even if there was no copyright notice on the original.

Journals are welcome to "compilation copyrights", covering their effort
in compiling my golden vocabulary.

The C++ Language Journal (something like that) summarizes a 
comp.lang.c++ thread each month on some aspect of C++. 
I have found the columns very useful in understanding C++ and 
thus expanding my knowledge of how NOT to design an OO programming language.
I personally don't wish to quash the concept of selected and edited
rehashing of postings, when they are of archival quality.

Lance Norskog

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