From: terry@thisbe.Eng.Sandy.Novell.COM (Terry Lambert)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.red-dwarf
Subject: Re: Red Dwarf Series One.
Date: 5 Oct 92 22:09:53 GMT
Organization: Novell NPD -- Sandy, UT

In article <5Fk6RB1w165w@berry.Cary.NC.US> pat@berry.Cary.NC.US (Pat Berry) writes:
>terry@thisbe.Eng.Sandy.Novell.COM (Terry Lambert) writes:
>
>> Bearing in mind that the original poster posted from the UK, and laws are
>> "different" over there, Pat is correct with regard to US law.
>
>A valid qualification, and one that I wasn't fully aware of at the time.
>I had a vague idea that the U.S. copyright law was more or less
>identical to the provisions of some international agreement on the
>subject of copyrights, but that turns out not to be the case.
>
>I went back to my source, a book called _The Business of Being a
>Writer_, by Stephen Goldin and Kathleen Sky, and learned that it was the
>Berne Convention that I was thinking of.  Much to my surprise, the U.S.
>is *not* a signatory to it.  Or, rather, it was not at the time the book
>was written, which was at least ten years ago (it's copyrighted 1982).

The US is a signatory to the Berne convention, and has been for some time;
the US, however, is not required to abide by any treaties not ratafied by
congress (for instance, "The Moon Treaty", which agrees not to militarize
space or place nuclear weapons in orbit where a de-orbit burn would drop
them on your head, was signed by the president, but not ratified by
congress).

In addition, international treaties are not allowed to supercede Federal
statutes, and are not allowed to be "unconstitutional" (or rather, they
are, but then the US is justified within it's own legal framework in
ignoring them).  Thus "first use" and "fair use" are still legal in the US
pursuant to Federal code and Article I Section 8 Paragraph 8 of the US
Constitution, even though both contradict portions of the Berne vonvention.

>Goldin and Sky report that the U.S. is a signatory to the Universal
>Copyright Convention, which "requires that works published in a
>signatory country (or by a citizen of a signatory country) be protected
>by another signatory country to the extent that country would protect
>works by its own citizens."  So U.S. copyright law, as I summarized it,
>would seem to prohibit the copying of "Red Dwarf" episodes within the
>U.S., even though "Red Dwarf" is copyrighted in the U.K.

The UCC, which was, I believe, ratafied in 1978, does offer protection
for materials produced outside the US; however, such protection, as you
have noted, is only to the extent of the protection granted US citizens
...that is, subject to exception for the "first use" and "fair use"
doctorines, which allow exceptions to the protections.

A common misconception (currently under discussion in misc.int-property,
comp.unix.bsd, and alt.suit.att-bsdi for it ramifications in AT&T's
attempt to gain ownership of the UCB Net/1 and UCB Net/2 software) is that
patent, trademark, and copyright law protect intellectual property as an
ends.  They do not.  The ends is the fostering of creativity.  Copyright/
Trademark/Patent law is a *means* to this end.  US law does not, for the
most part, recognize the concept of intellectual property as a legal
concept, except as it obtains to the socially desirable ends.

An interesting aside is that Jefferson argued specifically *against*
I.8.8 at the Constituitional Convention on the grounds that it would foster
creativity but stifle progress, and progress was more important.  If one
came up with something denied this protection, the theory was that they
would either publish anyway ("Authors write books to be read, not to make
money") or keep it as a trade secret.  Trade secrets which impact on
natioanl security issues were to be "nationalized" -- effectively allowing
the governemnt to abrogate trade secret protection at will, as long as do
so was deemed "in the national interest".


The gist of all this is:  I still say it's legal to make tapes from cable
or broadcast television without permission, or from original published tapes
with the permission of the owner, as long as there is no contract stating
otherwise.


					Terry Lambert
					terry@icarus.weber.edu
					terry_lambert@novell.com

---
Disclaimer:  Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of
my present or previous employers.