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I jump between dialup (work) and megafast broadband (at home) and find large banners annoying anyway. I think there should be a consensus that banners should be limited to 88 x 31.

Agreed. That cheese one is distracting

What is intellectual property?

Intellectual property is a legal concept under which we manage the protection and use of products of the human mind (as opposed to the human hand). The U.S. Constitution and the "Federalist Papers" refer specifically to patents (which apply to "useful articles," traditionally inventions) and copyright (which applies to 'literary expressions,' traditionally books and articles) as comprising the scope of intellectual property. There have also been some more recent additions: Outside of patents and copyrights, there are such things as trademarks and service marks (like "Coca Cola"), "trade dress" (a more amorphous concept involving the "look" of a product, like Coca Cola's red & white can with a script logo), "trade secrets" and others.

All of these separate areas of the law and commerce have been collected under the general term "intellectual property." However, they are very different from each other and are meant to protect different things.


Is copyright law the same for words, pictures, movies, music and software?

Yes, for the most part. Sure, it's easy to download and reproduce materials that you might find on the Web, but that doesn't make it lawful. Technically speaking, copyright law does deal differently with various media like music and software. But these differences tend to be largely technical and are outweighed by the similarities in the law's application.

Is copyright infringement always criminal?

No. It can be a criminal violation - with possible prison penalties. But it is most often a civil violation. That means the copyright holder needs to sue an infringer. If the infringement is proven, the rightsholder will get money either commensurate with the damage to the owner or with the benefit gained by the infringer. There may possibly be statutory damages and an order (injunction) for the infringement to cease. In both civil and criminal cases, the statute of limitations for infringement is generally three years.

You were saying?

If you're standing in court one day, charged with breaking the copyright of a software, please, for your sake, don't bring out the "car" arguement.

I just removed it, hope it's better now.

Cheers m8

How cute... a lecture on copyright law coming from someone who just literally ripped off the intellectual works of www.copyright.com, by copying from their resources verbatim and not even supplying a source reference... to make it sound as if you actually wrote it yourself. Hah.

Please take a moment to read their Copyright Statement.

You must include the copyright notice in any copy that you make.
You may not modify the information found in copyright.com without the express permission of Copyright Clearance Center.

The above information is ©1995 - 2003 Copyright Clearance Center

Theif.
_____

To follow up your arguement... The line that seperates that which is created by the mind or with the hand is becoming increasingly smaller. Cars are becoming almost completly computer driven, as their mechanical parts are being replaced with 1's and 0's... but the car still functions the same as it did before; it's still a car.

To compare mIRC, a program functioning not unlike a telephone or television set, with classical arts such as Shakespeare or Da Vinci is inane. While they are indeed a product of the mind, they are by no means the same.

Yet, there is no law that prohibits me from scratching out Romeo's name with Raccoon or playing Tic-Tac-Toe on the Mona Lisa in the privacy of my own home... so why should it be against the law for anyone to modify mIRC in the same way, for private undistributed use..?

- Raccoon

to racoon:


to zack:
to clear my points up ... yes i know i am breaking the law because i modify mircs appearance... please come find me and arrest me immediatly. OK on a more serious note, seeing as U yourself just violated a copywrite, id have to assume you will go turn urself in immediatly? i mean if your not going to then u must stop posting in a condescending manner towards anyone else just like u. i think thats kinda frowned upon and also labeled as a hypocrite (SP) .. at any rate ive not posted here to infer an arguement out of u, just to simply point out that everyone breaks the laws and each one has a reason, not that its right. just that ppl doing harm or disributing someone elses work as thier ownis definatly wrong, seeing as thats not what im doing and u were, id have to say my crime would be a lesser offense and id get a slap on the wrist.

there is no need to judge anyone at this point in the game because a modification of visual taste without sharing it with the outside world cannot be a crime. i mean seriously do u think i left the tags on my mattress's and pillows? yes i know they say the consumer can remove them, but say i then inturn sell this old stuff in a yardsale or rummage sale, does that mean the missing tags make me a criminal? really we can debate legalities all damn day and still never come to anything more than an im a criminal standpoint, live with it and get over urself.

Uhh? Stop jumping to conclusions, I never wanted to sound like I wrote it, and I would have gladly told you where I found the information I located if you had asked.

And yes, I never did read their copyright notice, that was bad of me, I know that.

And the car argument again *sigh* You buy a car, you have the rights to modify, transfer, sell, etc anyway you want (if you follow the correct laws, such as transfer of ownership and stuff like that). You buy a bit of software, a majority of the time you're buying a LICENCE to use the software, not the actual ownership of the software (which is VERY different from a car). You do NOT have the right to modify, transfer or sell the product; so get your facts right.

You get YOUR facts straight.

A software license holder has every right to transfer or sell their license, provided they forefit their own use of the program and transfer or destroy any original disks and materials that came with it.

I also maintain that the license holder has a right to modify said program for personal use only.

It's only when you go to transfer or sell a modified intellectual property that you raise copyright issues.

- Raccoon
PS. No-one should have to ask for a list of reference sources.

I'd say you're right, but there would be a very easy way around that. You don't modify the software, you modify memory. For example, dlls. If I make a dll that hooks into the binary data of a program and changes it, that would not violate the license agreement (an example is the motfv version changer dll). The reason? You're not modifying the actual exe, you are modifying the 1s and 0s stored in your RAM, they are not the actual program, they are a machine's interpretation of the program. I'd be willing to say that as long as you do your modifications in such a way that you never actually touch the exe file, you would not be violating any copyright laws. All you are doing is modifying the RAM you own, not the actual program.

I avoid that black & white way of looking at things. It's too often evil and misguided.

You get to a point where you're arguing the means to the end, and not the end itself. Eg, if it were a violation to glue your own pages onto the existing pages of someone's book... then it's just as wrong to use subspace field harmonics to form a gravitational bond one micron off the surface of the pages. You're not actually touching the pages, but the intent is still there.

I'm not saying you don't pose a good arguement, but I just wouldn't use it.

* Raccoon pokes his finger inches from your face, "I'm not touching you!"

Well basically, what I'm saying is what is copyrighted? It's the exe file, not the contents of your PC's memory. The contents in RAM are changing millions of times per second. Everytime you move the mouse, the contents of RAM related to mIRC are no longer the same. So basically, what I mean is, you're not actually modifing mIRC. It would be like this (pointless example), 2+2 = 4, a computer can calculate that just fine. Now, if I go and rewire the hardware in such a way that it makes it say 2+2 = 3, have I broken mIRC's license agreement? I haven't touched mIRC, but I have changed the way mIRC will function. Every time mIRC tries to do 2+2, it will no longer get a result of 4, it will now get 3, which will alter the programs functioning. But like I said, I haven't touched the actual program. To the same respect, if I rewired my hardware so that when mIRC says "mIRC 6.1 ...." so that it says "Codemastr client 1.0" have I broken mIRC's license agreement? Again, I haven't touched mIRC, all I've done is tell the hardware to interpret what mIRC is asking for differently. IMHO the same holds true if I make the modifications as the memory level rather than at the circuitry level. Plus existing events sorta support my claim, don't you think Kazaa, a company that makes money when people use their program (the advertisers pay them) would have sued the people producing things such as Kazaa Lite if they thought they could win?

It's the exe file, not the contents of your PC's memory.

Well, the exe file IS loaded in its entirety into your PC's memory (at one point or another). You might call that a copy. What is so different about modifying the 1's and 0's in your RAM, than modifying the 1's and 0's on YOUR Harddrive? I mean... are you breaking the license agreement by taking a neodymium magnet to your harddrive platter at the precise track that mIRC is stored? What if your magnet only changed a few key 1's and 0's, by chance, rather than by intent... and caused a super-cool mutation of mIRC. Now what if it was done by intent? What has changed?

I still maintain that licensed users have the right to modify their copy of mIRC.
I also maintain that right isn't restricted to hacky work-arounds, but rather direct modification.

It's not how they go about modifying it, it's how they intend to modify it and for what purpose.

i can definatly agree with the modifying it for my own purposes..... i have a mirc script i share with my friends but that never contains any mirc exe ive done anything too... i only use what i mess with (example would be changing bmp images and such) on my own personal use ... had i not told anyone i do that no one would ever know ive done it ..... i dont modify the version reply ... just the visual appearance. i really dont feel thats wrong as any change ive made clearly says its still mirc 6.03 to anyone who checks a version reply. Im not sharing what ive changed with anyone at all. i really dont see that as being a problem.

windows xp start screens are disgusingly awkward looking ... yet using the resource hacker they can be modified. now again i dont see this as any issue at all ... now will bill gates come to my house and yank my copy of windows away..... very doubtful, again just changing visual appearances

as a matter of fact, copyright was made so that you can't take any kind of work, and sell it or distribute it as your own. lately some countries decided that a few different laws might apply to certain things.

however, at this moment, i do not know any country where it is forbidden to copy a book, for example, if you are not giving it out, or publish it in any kind, quote from it, etc. etc. it is for example not allowed usually to copy a page out of a book, and distribute it to others, etc. etc.

i have never heard of, and can't envision any judge jury to sentence you to anything, if you simply make a copy of every book you have, if you do not give it to anyone else to read ( ok, why someone would make that copy anyway is another story )

likewise, i doubt that anyone will care if you take a program, and resource-edit it, for example to have a larger channel-central, if it is only for your own personal use, as long as you do not distribute it. ( which is what i did till 6.03 for my personal copy, which i did NOT pass on to anyone else ) and i doubt that any judge on this planet who is in his right mind will actually care.

ty zack, much appreciated

In the US, making a photocopy of a book without written permission is illegal actually. But, you did give me an interesting idea. I buy a book, I highlight stuff in the book, I underline things, I might even draw little pictures in the book. However, at no time have I violated the author's copyright on the book. This is because I modified it for my own personal use (fair use), if I were to sell my copy then yes I would break the law, but not if I keep it for myself. Now someone again will start in with the license vs ownership. So I point to the US supreme court case regarding VCRs. In the 1980s VCRs became popular and people were taping everything. The television industry did not like this. Why would you go out and buy a copy of a movie when you could tape it off of the tv? The case went to trial and the supreme court cited "fair use." What this means is, you can tape the shows (which you do NOT own, you are only allowed to use, exactly the same as a license) as long as you are doing it for personal reasons, i.e. I'm not going to be home at 8pm tonight but I want to watch the show. I have no doubt that that argument will eventually spread to CDs and DVDs and possibly even to software. As I said, when you tape something off of the TV you are not given ownership of that show, you are given permission to watch it. In the case of software, you are given permission to run the software. It seems to me that the situations are very similar.

damn good point and i think with tha precident in the supreme court ruling that anyone modifying mirc for thier own personal use could infact do so without having to worry about any criminal case against them. I am glad u pointed that out to everyone so they can quit squabbling over futile unimportant things such as this whole moral issue of making something for your own use purdy to your taste. ty