The Python 1.6 License Explained

[Alex Martelli]

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at beopen.com> wrote in message
news:cpzom3rz9w.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
    [snip]
> many years ago.  According to CNRI, in the sense of copyright law you
> only *publish* when you produce a tangible object like a book or a
> record, and a downloadable file doesn't qualify

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/102.html:
"""
(a) Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in
original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression,
now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced,
or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or
device.
"""

It would seem to me, as a humble non-lawyer, that a magnetic disc (or
other computer storage device) is a 'tangible medium of expression'
(perhaps 'later developed' depending on when this article was written)
'from which' a work of authorship can be 'perceived, reproduced, or
otherwise communicated', of course 'with the aid of a machine or
device'.  The "file" may not be a "tangible medium", but it surely
_lives_ on one -- a physical support of some kind.

Rather, the issue of *publication* appears to be, not whether the
work WAS "produced as a tangible object" (a prereq for copyright
protection), but rather:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/101.html
"""
''Publication'' is the distribution of copies or phonorecords
of a work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership,
or by rental, lease, or lending.
"""
and, "The offering to distribute" such copies or records is also
'Publication' (according to US laws; I don't think this generalizes
internationally), while "public performance and display" is not.

Example: I write a poem.
[case a]: I display the written text of my poem on a billboard.  I
have 'publically performed or displayed' the work of authorship: you
can read it -- you could photograph the billboard (or write down
the words that you're reading from it), so YOU could 'make copies' --
but I have NOT 'published' the poem, since I have not distributed
(nor offered to distribute) the copies.

So, my work of authorship is yet unpublished.

[case b]: I distribute, or offer to distribute, copies: OK, then the
work is published.


Placing my text somewhere so you can read it (and maybe copy it down)
is not publication.  If that 'somewhere' is a website rather than a
billboard, this would not seem to change the terms of the question:
you can read and/or copy it down yourself, but as long as I have not
distributed or offered to distribute copies, I have not published,
just 'publically performed and/or displayed'.

> -- copyright lawyers
> treat it as a *public performance*, a term which was introduced into
> copyright law for things like radio or tv broadcasts.

I think that, historically, "public performance or display" is a term
(and a concept) that much antedates both radio and TV; dramatic works,
music, &tc, were "publically performed or displayed" for many centuries
before radio or TV existed, after all, and copyright doctrine was also
formed well before TV or radio.


> I personally believe that copyright law needs to be updated to include
> websites under publication, but that's another battle, and it's not
> mine...

I'm not sure I agree.  Say that I provide a 1-900 number you can dial
to hear me read my poem; would you want to consider this publication?
It seems a clear case of public performance to me.  Of course you could
record the call, just as you could record many sorts of public displays
or performances, but that does not change the issue.  Now, if, instead
of having you call a phone number to hear me read my poem, I let you
listen to that same audio performance by visiting a website, what is
changed, to make this publication rather than performance?


> Of course some of it *was* published in the formal sense, e.g. on the
> CDs in the back of various books.

In which case I don't see how CNRI can claim it was an unpublished work.
Some _versions_ (those that didn't end up on copies distributed, or
whose distribution was offered) may be unpublished, but surely not
the work itself.


Alex