OT: "Hypothetical" Plagiarism by CEO

[fredfighter]

Oh, right. Copyright PROTECTION is not available. It is the protection that is not available. The copyrights exist, not withstanding that they are not protected.

Your statement was essentially correct.

The inavailability of copyright PROTECTION means the government will not (as it cannot) PROTECT its copyrights.

Note the statute does not state that the copyright does not exist or that it cannot be ransferred to another party.

...

'Reproduction rights' ARE a component of copyright by definition.

While they may have sold processed imagery, they certainly also sold unenhanced imagery exactly as it was received from the government.

Perhaps we should locate and read that contract. ISTR that others were prohibitted from distributing the raw LandSat imagery that was transferred, which if so, is therfor indistinguishible from a transfer of copyright.

[Robert Bonomi]

If transferred to another party, it is *still* unenforceable, to use your language.

"Copyright protection under this title is not available for works of the United States Government."

A thing which no one can enforce is no different than a thing which does not exist.

e.g., I have the _only_ copy remaining in existence of a book printed in 1850, in Philadelphia, Penn, USA.

I'm sure you will agree that there is no copyright in effect on that work.

I can, however, sell permission to reproduce copies of that book. and agree not to sell that same permission to anyone else.

Now, if, after having done so, I loan that book to someone else, who photocopies the pages without (or even with) my knowledge, and starts selling copies of *those* pages, the poor guy who 'bought' from me is just SOL. I haven't breached my contract with him, 'somebody else' is not bound by that contract, and no 'statutory' prohibition to their copying applies.

You *have* to be 'recalling' incorrectly. "Doctrine of first sale" trumps contract terms restricting buyers actions (except in the case of real property, and restrictions that 'run with the land'), *absent* other statutory provisions (such as copyright -- which is _not_ applicable in this situation) that constrain the buyer from 'doing as he will' with that which he owns outright.

[Enoch Root]

Okay, this was real. It's on the bottom of the front page of the NYT business section.

er