SCO Website Using Groklaw's Content

darkonc writes "It looks like they didn't learn from the BSD debacle (where, having sued Berkley for copyright infringement, AT&T found that they were using BSD code without acknowledging it's source). Groklaw has an article detailing how SCO has documents created by and for Groklaw on their site -- without even acknowledging the source. It seems that the defenders of the holy IP principle have hoisted the skull and bones."

Comments

There's No IP Here

[Royster]

Scanning a document does not give a copyright to the person who performs the scan. SCO has done nothing illegal by grabbing these document.

We rightfully excoriate MSFT and SCO when they make overreaching IP claims. We should be the last ones to make overreaching claims.

That said, the one thing which makes SCOX's claims look the worse is their own damn filings. By publishing them themselves, they aren't helping themselves in the public eye.

Re:There's No IP Here

[Ryan Stortz]

A few days ago, I was going through the Project Gutenberg FAQ. I forget why, but it covers a few copyright issues with public domain works:

C.16. How come my paper book of Shakespeare says it's "Copyright 1988"?

Shakespeare was published long enough ago to be indisputably in the public domain everywhere, so how can a Shakespeare text be copyrighted?

There are two possibilities:

1. The author or publisher has changed or edited the text enough to qualify as a "new edition", which gets a "new copyright".

2. The publisher has added extra material, such as an introduction, critical essays, footnotes, or an index. This extra material is new, and the publisher owns the copyright on it.

The problem with these practices is that a publisher, having added this copyrighted material, or edited the text even in a minor way, may simply put a copyright notice on the whole book, even though the main part of it--the text itself--is in the public domain! And as time goes on, the number of original surviving books that can be proved to be in the public domain grows smaller and smaller; and meanwhile publishers are cranking out more and more editions that have copyright notices. Eventually it becomes harder and harder to prove that a particular book is in the public domain, since there are few pre-1923 copies available as evidence.

C.17. What makes a "new copyright"?

A special case, that isn't quite a new edition, is when someone "marks up" a public domain text in, for example, HTML. Where this happens, the text is in the public domain, but the markup is copyrighted. We've already seen that when an editor adds footnotes to a public domain text, he owns copyright on the footnotes but not on the text: similarly, when he adds markup to the text, he owns copyright on the markup.

So, basically the formatting, anything additional added, and the general presentation are all copyrighted. I don't visit Groklaw, but I'm sure they made edits, footnotes, and other changes. If SCO included any of those, they'd be violating copyright.

Re:Wow..

[Anonymous Coward]

Still, to steal from groklaw...

Copyright infringement is not theft. Not when you share music illegally. Not when you distribute GPLed software against its license terms. Not when you copy documents from a website on "our side".

Re:That's the 2nd "suicide" in 4 months.

[Mad_Rain]

Well, before you break out the actors from your favorite CSI/Law & Order divisions, some researchers notice that suicides tend to cluster together, and are occassionally thought of as "contagious". That is, people who are close (family, friends, and business associates) have an increased risk of suicide when someone near them commits suicide as well.

So unless you have some other information about those suicides that makes them look less coincidental, perhaps you should allow the dead to rest instead of furthering a tin-foil hat craze. :)

Re:Head of Canopy, Noorda's Daughter killed hersel

[gmack]

That's by Maureen O'Gara. You should never post anything by her as fact.

She often gets a lot of the facts wrong and in this case the only thing we know for certain is that there has been a death. Maureen is the only one calling it a suicide and everyone has reported that the Noorda family is not releasing any details.

It may be a suicide or it may not be and we won't know for certain until a real journalist supplies more information.