> Sender: Alan Crosswell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Wed, 10 Mar 99 23:01:37 EST
> From: Alan Crosswell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: Tim Salo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: A dose of realit
A handful of random comments...
> Tim Salo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >Has an authoritative opinion (e.g., by a court) ever been expressed
>
> Do you really want to invite lawyers in to stifle innovation?
Copyright, trademark and patent rights are legal rights. Legal rights
usually involve lawyers. I'm not sure what your point is...
I understand that copyright, trademark, patent and trade secret rights
have been tuned over the centuries to balance the rights of individuals
to the fruits of their innovations against the rights of society at
large to benefit from those innovations.
It appears to me that Bob is asserting rights that he simply doesn't
have, namely the right to copyright a network protocol. That's
my question; not whether it might be "a bad thing" if too many people
tinkered with the protocol, (or, to use your language, if too many
people "innovated").
> Do you want to stick it to another member of our fraternity that badly?
In spite of your rather snotty language and assertion, my real interest
is in the general issue of whether anyone, not just Bob, can assert
copyright of a network protocol. My interest is not APRS per se, but
the notion that anyone can claim copyright protection to a protocol.
(Note that most network protocols are not amateur radio protocols.)
> Yes, Bob is a "personality" and has some whacky ideas that go against
> the grain of our particular geek religion, but I think it's better to
> preach the religion and win him over with examples of why it is good
> than to threaten to violate the spirit of his claims irrespective
> of the technical legality of them. There is a great deal of fear among
> some people that their good ideas will be usurped by others who will
> reap all the benefits of their work so they try to protect themselves.
That's what copyright, trademark, patent and trade secret laws are all
about. However, I don't believe that making what appear to be false
claims about these legal protections does anyone any good.
I'll send Bob some mail when I get to it.
-tjs
