Re: New: Tazlure (free, open-ended, www, human, fantasy, rpg)

From: Jason Paul McCartan <jasonm@mindshiftdesign.com>

Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 01:02:11 +0000

David desJardins wrote:

> "Steve T." <MadCentral@aol.com> writes:
>> In which case they would need to state that clearly for it to be any
>> use.  Copyright notices must be laid out in a clear and concise
>> manner, following specific rules, to be considered valid.  Both the
>> U.S. and the E.U. have pretty clear guidelines on the correct form.
>
> In any of the signatories to international copyright treaties (which
> include the US and all of the members of the EU), pretty much anything
> you create is copyrighted automatically, regardless of whether you put
> any notice on it or not.  The notice does give you certain statutory
> rights, e.g., might increase the damages you can collect for certain
> kinds of violations, but doesn't change your basic right to prevent
> copying of the material.

Pretty much how I understand it.  There is no copyright notice needed, but
it does serve to remind and does give extra legal rights, as David says.

In the US, you're also supposed to send two copies of each copyrighted
documents to the US Library of Congress, and file a form with a fee to
allow you to register a US-based copyright. This at least gives you added
protection under US Law. Note that US law is mostly in sync with the Berne
Convention, but thas had some amendments. The recent law pushed through by
the US Senate extending the ownership of Disney's Mickey Mouse is being
heavily argued against right now. The basics of that law change meant that
the period that Mickey Mouse and other Disney properties belonged to Disney
was extended to 90 years from first creation instead of the 75 (I think)
years it was before. It's actually colloquially called "The Mickey Mouse
Copuright Law".

--
Jason Paul McCartan

References

Re: New: Tazlure (free, open-ended, www, human, fantasy, rpg)
David desJardins <desj@math.berkeley.edu>
Fri, 14 Jun 2002 00:07:05 +0000
Re: New: Tazlure (free, open-ended, www, human, fantasy, rpg)
Jason Paul McCartan <jasonm@mindshiftdesign.com>
Thu, 13 Jun 2002 22:19:08 +0000
Re: New: Tazlure (free, open-ended, www, human, fantasy, rpg)
madcentral@aol.com (MadCentral)
Thu, 13 Jun 2002 23:52:41 +0000