Re: websites: public vs private information?

On Tue, 06 Jun 2000, Ransford Pyle <pyle[_at_]mail.ucf.edu> wrote:
>
> If, as I understand it, the ideas in my head are not copyrighted,
> when do they become fixed for the purpose of established copyright
> protection?

According to Section 102 of 17 USC, copyright commences when "original works of authorship" are "fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device."

> I made notes to myself while attending a conference, notes for me
> to work on later -- are these fixed?

Yes, if you "made" them other than strictly mentally -- *and* assuming that they would qualify as an original work of authorship. (If you have simply noted the verbatim remarks of the speakers at the conference, they wouldn't. Your own comments, however, would or certainly might.) Section 101 says that something is "fixed" in the aforesaid medium when its embodiment in the medium "is sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration." Something written on a piece of paper would certainly qualify.

By the way, and possibly applying to the situation Barry Caplan was discussing, that paragraph of section 101 adds: "A work consisting of sounds, images, or both, that are being transmitted, is 'fixed' for purposes of this title if a fixation of the work is being made simultaneously with its transmission."

> On the other hand, if I make my usual cryptic notes on scraps of
> paper in preparation to write a paper for publication, are these
> fixed?

See above.

> Does fixation suggest a more or less permanent form?

I don't *think* so, although a certain degree of stability is required; see above quote from Title 17.

> When I send this message, is it covered by copyright? When I
> write it? When I press 'Send'? When it is put in a packet and
> transmitted? When you open your Inbox? When the first person
> reads it?

That may depend on what your software does (my knowledge isn't sufficiently broad to comment). In my own case, as I type, this message exists only in (intangible) RAM. But as soon as I've finished composing it (I think), and certainly when I press the key sending it on its way (I *know*), it will have been placed on my computer's hard disk, which qualifies it for protection; I know that my software does this. It has that protection even if no one else *ever* reads it.

--Dodi Schultz
  <schultz[_at_]compuserve.com> Received on Wed Jun 07 2000 - 16:51:03 GMT