From: Joel Kolstad on Fri, Feb 17 2006 9:32 am

"Roy Lewallen" wrote in message

I suggest keeping more like $20,000. The last time I checked with my lawyer,
that was the maximum penalty for willful copyright infringement, in addition
to any monetary damages which could be proved. All that's necessary to get
the $20k, I was told, is to prove that the infringement was willful, not
that any financial damage occurred.

People seem to have less and less compunction against stealing intellectual
property, I suppose because it keeps getting easier to do.

I agree with you in general, although I think that scanning old magazines and
books falls into a gray area where one is -- in all likelihood -- breaking the
letter of the law but generally not its spirit. I accept rationalizations
along those lines, just as I can't really fault someone who decided so travel
100Mph through some utterly uninhabited random road in Eastern Oregon. :-)

Unrelated "rationalizations." Breaking a law or rules or other
directives is still BREAKING something, purloining someone's
original work. Stealing.

In the exact words of THE LAW (copyright law in this case), it is
okay to make a copy FOR A VERY LIMITED USE such as a personal
reference or to help a friend. Where it becomes a BREAKING is if
it is done TO MAKE MONEY IN COPYING or gain something that
"belonged" to the original author (such as gain a reputation
without working for that "rep").

In Roy's case on EZNEC, he put in a lot of work in translation
of (totally copyable by law) U.S. government work into a useful
program of antenna analysis. Roy gets return on his investment of
time and uniqueness of result presentation on a computer by
selling copies of his work for money. There SHOULD be some
protection for such work by anyone in order to foster and preserve
original work...else there wouldn't be any point in doing original
work other than uncompensated personal pleasure in doing so.

Still, anyone who is hauled into court can't really complain, but personally
I'd hope that some lawyer hoping to make an example would choose someone
posting to alt.binaries.e-book.technical (where 99% of the posts are clear
violations of the letter and spirit of copyright law) rather than the OP.

No, such copyright-specialist attorneys wouldn't bother with such
small potatoes. They would go after the BIG violators...DVD
and CD copiers and those manufacturing firms making knock-off
copies of goods, the stealing of imagery (in graphics or words)
and trying to imply they are "as good" as a well-known brand.

Rationalizations are as diverse and original as fertile minds can create.
The ultimate result will be that eventually, nobody will bother creating
anything original.

ABSOLUTELY TRUE!

Only in some sort of idealist world. In the real world, original creations
will be generated so long as doing so puts bread on the table.

THIS is the real world. There's no "special case" that justifies
that idealistic rationalization you made...it is circular logic in
itself...in the real world.

"Originality" may occur in humans for a variety of reasons, usually
done to improve a personal situation, a way of doing things easier,
doing it better, so forth. However, the "originality" does NOT, by
itself, "put bread on the table." To do that requires much more
personal investment and effort to make the money that buys the
bread that is put on the table.

EZNEC is an example that applies here. The work that Roy did on
translation of (free) code, cleaning it up, making it presentable
in a meaningful manner to users, was considerable, much more so
than just getting the original program code to work. Why should
Roy give away such effort? To perform such a service "for the
good of hobbyists?" Hardly worth it to Roy. So, who else would
do so? Other than someone wanting a return on their investment
of time and effort?

Anyone can get a copy of the Methods of Moments computer program
written for the U.S. government. For free (discounting cost of
on-line charges for accessing the few sites having it). I have
an older copy. BIG it is! HUGE. My old copy is written in
FORTRAN (which I happen to speak). What it does NOT have for free
is a way of showing the results in anything but tabular form, no
graphics to instantly show the antenna patterns, VSWR of feed
point, RF currents, etc. If you don't speak tabular, the original
becomes WORK in trying to "see" the results. WORK, mind-sweat,
slogging through numbers that are seldom intuitive to everyone
without the graphic presentation. Roy MADE the graphical
presentation possible through his efforts. So did others in their
different adaptations of Method of Moments analysis programs.

Would you
rather sell 1,000 copies of a 99% copy-proof program at $10,000 each or
1,000,000 copies of a pretty-readily-copyable program at $100 each? Bill
Gates clearly prefers the later.

Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Microsoft are IRRELEVANT here. There's
NO SUCH THING as a "copy-proof program." If it is a useable
program, then it CAN - eventually - be copied; the only true
"copy-proof program" is something that no one can use.

Microsoft became a software giant through lots and lots of OTHER
kinds of time/effort investment plus savvy in salesmanship...not
to overlook their Big Break in selling their operating system
(with THEM still owning the copyrights) to IBM for the IBM PC.

Without the protection of the copyright law, Microsoft could
never have made that Big Break that started their humongous
incoming cash flow.

As you're probably aware, Don Lancaster makes a good point that the
oft-heralded intellectual property protection device of the patent really
doesn't do you much good in the real world, at least until you're a very large
company.

Don Lancaster is a clever writer and marketer of himself, not a
guru of electronics. Patent Law is a separate issue from
copyright law. The protection of original work is the same in
principle.

Tektronix seemed to be using this approach decades back when the
comprehensive use of T-coils to obtain wider frequency respones was a
well-protected inside secret, no?

"T-coils?" Wide bandwidth video amplifiers were no big secret
in the later 1940s when Vollum got Tektronix started with the
first accurate, reproducible oscilloscopes...accurate in their
sweep timing as well as vertical volts per division scaling.
Note: I began electronics using a Tektronix 511AD after trying
to get a Dumont 'scope kluge to yield meaningful results. Not
the same animal. Lots and lots of OTHER innovations inside the
Tektronix 'scopes that made their reputation in later years.

Incidentally, I was told by the ARRL that authors of articles in all their
publications are given blanket permission to put a copy of articles they've
written on their own web site, with appropriate acknowledgment that the ARRL
owns the copyright and reproduction is by permission. That's generous of
them.

[no, NOT "generous"...see following]

I suppose it is, but these days you can't make any decent money writing for
the ARRL or the magazines, and as such publications have to be pretty generous
in what they offer because they're effectively asking for significant
donations of intellectual property by their authors.

ARRL is primarily a publishing house in order to make the rest of
their organization viable. As such, ALL work for them is on a
"first rights" basis. That is, they get first crack at publishing
a contracted work...AND the continued publishing of such work for
years without ANY extra compensation to authors. It's essentially
the same as the "ego press" (private publishers who are just
preparer-printers where the author pays for that printing service).

The only ones who make any money in hobby publications are the
publishers themselves. Look at the author's compensation statements
on the ARRL website to see how little money authors receive.
Authors
get mainly the ego-trip of Being Published. For some that is
compensation enough, but ego money doesn't put bread on the table.

Been there, done that, got the table and the bread.