[Coco] Re: Help simplify copyright law for scholars, artists.

[Dennis Bathory-Kitsz]

At 11:04 PM 3/2/05 -0500, John E. Malmberg wrote:
>I like the idea, however most of the cases that I can see affecting COCO 
>and computer hobbyist is where the copyright holder decides to just 
>ignore requests, or worse just arbitrarily deny them.  While they also 
>seem to ignore non-commercial violations of the copyrights for obsolete 
>software, it does not weaken the copyright on it.

All true. But since this is a comment period, it may be worthwhile if
experiences are reported. There are reports on this list of orphan software
(particularly where current copyright ownership can't be ascertained).

>It looks like for computer hobbyists it is a case of either finding the 
>original media, or reverse engineering a replacement such as was done 
>with the NITROS project.

Reverse engineering remains a grey area, notably if any copy protection was
every included. Again, if you have experiences, it's worth offering them.

I made my own comments. I set a poem to music in 1972 with the permission
of the copyright owner, a personal friend. I want to publish it, but
without a release, I can't. And I have spent five years trying to find the
author (even if she is alive or dead, much less where she lives) without
success.

Dennis