Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site moncol.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxj!houxm!vax135!petsd!moncol!john From: john@moncol.UUCP (John Ruschmeyer) Newsgroups: net.books,net.sf-lovers,net.legal Subject: Douglas Adams and copyright law 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?