[HN Gopher] The /bin/true Command and Copyright (2009)
___________________________________________________________________
The /bin/true Command and Copyright (2009)
Author : kmstout
Score : 93 points
Date : 2021-08-21 15:18 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (trillian.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (trillian.mit.edu)
| kragen wrote:
| See also
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandjazzmusic/3...
| (https://archive.is/sjYJG), where the rumored settlement payment
| was PS100,000.
| bdowling wrote:
| Sometimes parties pay what seems like a lot of money to settle
| dubious claims because it's cheaper and less time-consuming
| than fighting them. That can be completely rational. But paying
| PS100,000 for infringing one minute of _silence_ is just
| ridiculous.
| kragen wrote:
| Well, he sold a lot of copies of that one minute of silence,
| so I think the real question is whether it was copyrightable.
| I mean, if the answer is "yes", then the following question
| is what reason there is to suspect that the government that
| made it copyrightable is anything more than a criminal
| racket.
| [deleted]
| chrismorgan wrote:
| (1990), or perhaps as late as (2009) if you have the right sense
| of humour.
|
| Previous discussions:
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3528663 in 2012
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15457281 in 2017
| cowturds wrote:
| rewrite in C++ to avoid copyright
|
| https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2012-J...
| bdowling wrote:
| Adding copyright notices to every source code file is reasonable
| because it costs next to nothing. Figuring out what is
| copyrightable, on the other hand, is expensive, because it
| requires lawyers, and a waste of time because lawyers' answers
| are always "it depends". You never actually know how enforceable
| your copyright claim is until you actually litigate, which is
| REALLY expensive.
| kragen wrote:
| > _Adding copyright notices to every source code file is
| reasonable because it costs next to nothing._
|
| Yes, if your integrity is worthless.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| My company doesn't require this, but I also don't understand
| in any way how adding copyright boilerplate to each source
| file has anything to do with the writer's integrity. Are the
| people in the GNU foundation lacking in integrity, since they
| have this policy?
| kragen wrote:
| Placing copyright notices on things you don't have a
| copyright on amounts to making a false claim that they are
| not only copyrightable but that you own the copyright,
| hoping to intimidate other people out of exercising their
| legal rights. Lying in order to intimidate people,
| particularly to intimidate them into paying you, is not
| only dishonest but contemptible. It's no different from the
| mugger who says he owns the Golden Gate Bridge and demands
| $10 from you to cross it.
|
| The GNU foundation, whatever its failings, does not have a
| policy of claiming copyright on blank lines.
| st_goliath wrote:
| > a waste of time because lawyers' answers are always "it
| depends".
|
| Sorry for the little OT rant, but I'll have to object to that.
| That's IMO less of a lawyer thing, and more a "asking a field
| expert a generic question and expecting an immediate, brief
| answer" kind of thing.
|
| In my experience, if you straight up ask any field expert, be
| it a lawyer, a doctor, an engineer, etc... a vague, but
| obviously case specific question, the _real_ experts will
| rather try to point out that they lack necessary background
| information and that the underlying subject matter is _not that
| simple_ ( "It depends", "I'd have to look into this", "Well
| uhmmm, possibly/maybe/yes/kind of, _but_... ", "It's not that
| simple").
|
| If you're not particularly familiar with some subject matter,
| it is kind of hard to gauge that the "simple question" might be
| very vague, maybe confuse some subject matter and might be
| edging on a very complex topic.
|
| I take it most people here have some sort of programming
| background? Just try to remember the last family gathering
| where someone started pestering you about their computer
| problems, or tried to start small talk about something they
| picked up in the headlines. Or maybe a meeting with management
| where you were asked a "but couldn't you just [simply]...."
| kind of question (or even worse: "exactly how long will this
| take?") and they tried to press you for a swift, immediate
| answer.
|
| From my experience so far, I'd even go further and suggest to
| be skeptical of _any_ "expert" who _has a habit_ of confidently
| answering briefly and to the point.
| oconnor663 wrote:
| Yeah this is funny, but it's not stupid. It's also a lot
| simpler to have a company policy that says "every code file
| should have this boilerplate at the top of it" than to try to
| specify exactly what does and doesn't. You could even check for
| this in your CI pipeline, to avoid wasting time debating it in
| code review.
| cperciva wrote:
| Adding copyright notices to every source code file is also
| pointless, since copyright notices are no longer required to
| obtain copyright protection.
| smallnamespace wrote:
| Copyright notices are useful the same way written contracts
| are: you legally do not need a notice (written contract) to
| establish copyright protection (enter into a contract), but
| if a dispute arises it helps establish the fact that the user
| was notified (the other party agreed to this contract).
|
| A question of 'law' vs 'facts'
| paulddraper wrote:
| Those aren't at all analogous.
|
| The automatic state for content is "protected by
| copyright," unless a different arrangement is made.
|
| The automatic state for contract terms is "not agreed to,"
| unless a different arrangement is made.
|
| tl;dr You need proof (written or otherwise) that a contact
| happened; not so with copyright protection.
| smallnamespace wrote:
| Oral contracts are legal and valid, yet most people write
| down their contracts for good, practical reasons outside
| of strict legality.
|
| Same goes for copyright notices. For example, the notice
| makes it hard for a violator to use a negligence defense,
| effectively increasing the penalty for violations.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| It might help to prove intent when somebody does violate a
| license (they cannot say "oh wow this was copyrighted? i
| totally didn't know!")
| TheDong wrote:
| I don't think that follows naturally.
|
| The default if code does not have any notice anywhere is
| that it is copyrighted, and no license is given to anyone
| to use it, so any use of it is a violation.
|
| At least in the US, all creative works are copyrighted by
| default (such as this comment, which does not include a
| notice of such, but is copyrighted).
|
| Because of that, the default assumption of anyone would be
| that anything is copyrighted and cannot be used for any
| purpose outside of fair use unless there is a specific
| license granting additional usage.
| bdowling wrote:
| A copyright notice is relevant to willful infringement,
| which may result in higher damages. Willful infringement
| requires that the infringer actually knew or should have
| known (or deliberately avoided finding out) that the
| copied material was copyrighted.
| cperciva wrote:
| When you're talking about source code, I don't think
| anyone is going to get away with "I thought the author
| died more than 70 years ago".
| Thiez wrote:
| If any creative work is copyrighted by default (and
| ignorance of the law is not an excuse) then surely all
| use of a creative work without a license is willful
| infringement?
| randombits0 wrote:
| To expand on that idea, purely functional expressions are not
| copyrightable in the first place. How and when software becomes
| copyrightable is undefined in law.
| mseepgood wrote:
| > So if you use blank lines in any of your files, you are in
| blatant violation of AT&T's copyright claim.
|
| I think it has to be exactly these three blank lines, not just
| any three blank lines.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Does someone need to write an essay titled "What Colour is your
| whitespace?"?
|
| ref: https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
| [deleted]
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Well damn. I guess I can't use blank lines in my code anymore.
| This is going to be rough.
|
| Also are there any copyright koans? As in a copyright notice that
| copyrights itself?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Just copy them from public domain works! Or, come up with the
| independently - an absolute defence to copyright infringement.
| KETpXDDzR wrote:
| That's fair use, not a copyright violation.
|
| Google: "(in US copyright law) the doctrine that brief excerpts
| of copyright material may, under certain circumstances, be quoted
| verbatim for purposes such as criticism, news reporting,
| teaching, and research, without the need for permission from or
| payment to the copyright holder.".
| amacbride wrote:
| "Note that there is one less blank line here; it has been
| replaced by the #! line. But otherwise it is identical. Sun has
| merely passed on the copyright notice. I wonder if Sun has
| written permission from AT&T to use blank lines in their code?"
|
| Fun fact: SVR4 was a joint AT&T/Sun project, so this was a SunOS
| file originally -- I believe the "SMI" in the #ident line stands
| for "Sun Microsystems Inc." and was a standard feature of all our
| SCCS identifiers.
| cowturds wrote:
| /bin/true is backwards then since 0 usually means false
|
| > Zero is used to represent false, and One is used to represent
| true. For interpretation, Zero is interpreted as false and
| anything non-zero is interpreted as true.
| anyfoo wrote:
| Not in this context. In POSIX exit codes, 0 means "no error",
| i.e. success. && and || in the shell even work like that.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Shell commands use an exit status of 0 to indicate success, and
| any other number indicates failure
| kodah wrote:
| The one confusing thing to me about this is that you're not
| supposed to append copyright years to a notice when the contents
| have not changed, yet this script got copyrighted all the way to
| 1989.
| bdowling wrote:
| > you're not supposed to append copyright years to a notice
|
| It shouldn't matter because the date of actual first
| publication would control, not what is on one particular
| notice.
| teddyh wrote:
| I've heard that, but I've also heard that the year is supposed
| to be updated whenever it's _published_ again.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Companies have to vigorously protect their intellectual property
| and copyright of source regardless. If they fail in one instance
| to assert those then it can badly impact them when it matters.
| kevin_b_er wrote:
| This is false in the United States. Failure to assert copyright
| does not relinquish it. Trademark does, however, because it is
| connected to brand recognition concepts.
| charles_f wrote:
| Reminds me of a CEO I used to work for who realized that old
| blog articles (which no-one was reading anyway) were
| copyrighted of the years they were written, and made a fuss
| that "no-one is paying attention, these details are important
| for our image, we need to show that we're up to date". There
| was no explaining him that this is not how copyright works,
| what's important was that we remind people of the current
| year.
| lixtra wrote:
| I heard this about brands. Do you have examples for copyright?
| ineedasername wrote:
| The court transcript of a copyright lawsuit would be hilarious:
|
| --What is the copyright content? _Nothing_.
|
| --Are you saying that that you have no copyright? _No_
|
| --Okay, can you then give me a summary of the content? _It 's
| nothing_
|
| And so on.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| I'm sure expert witness Bud Abbott could clear this all up for
| them.
| TheDong wrote:
| > So if you use blank lines in any of your files, you are in
| blatant violation of AT&T's copyright claim
|
| Independent derivation of a work is defense against copyright
| infringement.
|
| Even if the copyright on these blank lines were to be valid, it
| would be reasonable to claim that your own use of blank lines was
| independent, not a derivative work copying from theirs.
|
| Patents do not require actual copying to infringe, but copyright
| does. If you can prove you did not know of the original work, or
| otherwise would have come up with the same thing on your own,
| that's enough to absolve you of copyright issues.
| Miiko wrote:
| > Patents do not require actual copying to infringe, but
| copyright does.
|
| In other words, if you use Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V to copy these blank
| lines, then you infringe AT&T copyright. If you don't and add
| blank lines by other means - you don't ;)
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| No. You can copy without copy-and-paste. But, a blank line
| isn't enough to be a creative work.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-08-21 23:00 UTC)