[Coco] [Color Computer]Ira's Archive (trs-80.com) AvailableForDownload

[Dennis Bathory-Kitsz]

At 10:36 PM 6/23/2007 -0500, George's Coco Address wrote:
> Enough of this already. I'm tired of this bitching about what is legal or 
>not.

I'm sorry you're tired of the topic. Some of us have a great deal of
interest in copyright issues and have spent a good deal of time trying to
affect its future -- including making it easier for so-called abandonware
such as our old computer materials to be archived.

I've sent testimony to hearings by the Registrar on these issues, and wrote
one the seminal articles on copyright way back in 1980 (before software
could be copyrighted), interviewing Bill Gates, John Hersey, and many
others whose names have faded today.

The ramifications of copyright not only on our little topic but on my "real
life" as a composer are deep. The changes to the laws have made it
enormously complicated, not only the DMCA -- which can be used in no time
to take down my extensive radio archive site, even though I have private
agreements with all the composers -- but also the "Mickey Mouse Act" that
extended copyrights *backwards* (so-called copyright "restoration") which
prevents some of my music from being performed because the texts are now
again under copyright. The T.S. Eliot estate, for example, is nasty in its
takedowns.

So -- with respect to Color Computer articles, diagrams, and software --
when anyone (and we've been through this before) arbitrarily and carelessly
grabs material for which permission has been given to one person and
redistributes it without permission elsewhere, then it threatens to put the
years hard preservation work of many people in danger. When anyone grabs &
scans copyrighted material or posts programs without permission, it does
the same. Even reasonable care or desire to preserve history are not yet a
defense.

It will be at least 90 more years before most of these documents leave
copyright protection, and none of us will live to see that day. If you
think it's annoying to you to listen to the discussions, then fire off a
letter to your congressional delegation asking that the law be modified,
which will end the need for us to talk about it. In the meantime, just a
few takedown notices will make all our archives vanish.

These are not simpleminded issues and this is not "bitching about what is
legal or not."

Dennis





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