Richard Sharpe wrote:
>
> >No one can legally "take your code and change it" because you leave off
> >the copyright notice. The only reason to include a proper copyright
>
> In 1997 and 1998, a person in the US tried to rip off Samba. He tried to
> sell it to Sun. He almost had a deal until people on the Samba team twigged
> to the fact that the product being sold was a poorly modified copy of
> Samba. One of the Samba copyright notices had been left intact.
>
> The Samba team had to 'register' the copyright in the US, so that legal
> action could be taken against this person. This had to be done in
> Washington DC. A member of the Samba team took source code listings to the
> appropriate place and did the registration.
You can sue for actual damages even if you have never filed the relevant
materials with the jurisdiction's government. The hard part, of course,
is proving actual damages, especially on an open-source project.
Registering the copyright gives you the right to also sue for lawyer's
fees, and for statutory damages, which range from slap-on-the-wrist up
to about $20,000, depending on the jurisdiction and the circumstances.
Filing for copyright isn't hard, it just requires filling out a "Form
TX" (about as complex as a US 1040EZ tax form, IIRC) and sending a
printout of the work along with the form and $20 to the appropriate
office in Washington, DC.
Of course, it makes sense to renew the filing every now and then,
especially while the project is evolving, but just _how_ frequent is
"right" I can't say. If you order a particular packet along with the
form TX, it includes a booklet that explains a lot of this. Maybe it
also covers the frequency issue.
Once again, I refer interested readers to the Copyright FAQ at
www.faqs.org.
--
= Warren Young: www.cyberport.com/~tangent | Yesterday it worked.
= ICBM Address: 36.8274040N, 108.0204086W, | Today it is not working.
= alt. 1714m | Windows is like that.
