Message-ID: <153@moncol.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 7-Jan-85 22:28:07 EST
Article-I.D.: moncol.153
Posted: Mon Jan  7 22:28:07 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 8-Jan-85 05:39:45 EST
References: <1239@cca.UUCP>
Organization: Monmouth College, West Long Branch, NJ 07764
Lines: 35
Xref: watmath net.books:1176 net.sf-lovers:5490 net.legal:1236

>From: dee@cca.UUCP (Donald Eastlake)
>
>Under the new US Copyright law, a copyright notice is not defective if
>it gives a year one year in the future from the actual year of
>publication.  However, the term of the copyright runs from the actual
>year of publication.  There is also no problem if the year is correct or
>is earlier than the actual year of publication.  If the year given is
>more than one year after the actual year of publication, it is as if no
>notice were put on the book.  However, there are number of circumstances
>under which omission of notice is not fatal so you still can't tell if
>its completely in the public domain.
>
The above reminds me of a quote from Adams' book _The Restuarant
at the End of the Universe_. In a passage about some statistics 
in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", he writes:

"...the simplistic style in which they are written is partly 
explained by the fact that the editors, having to meet a 
publishing deadline, copied the information off the back of a 
packet of breakfast cereal, hastily embroidering it with a few 
footnotes in order to avoid persecution under the 
incomprehensibly tortuous Galactic Copyright laws.

  "It is interesting to note that a later and wilier editor sent
the book backward in time through a temporal warp, and then 
successfully sued the breakfast cereal company for infringement 
of the same laws."

-- 
	John Ruschmeyer		...!vax135!petsd!moncol!john
	Monmouth College
	W. Long Branch, NJ 07764

Kirk:   You ought to sell a manual of instructions with these things.
Cyrano: If I did, Captain... what would happen to the search for knowledge?