Unauthorized Sale of Redristributable Software
John Toebes
First a little background:
I opened up the latest issue of AmigaWorld to find an advertisement for
a company in CA advertising HACK for sale. Claiming to be 'The Public Domain
Connection', they list 2 disks containing Hack:
001: Hack. Incredible graphics version.
002: Hack. Text version, for Connoisseurs.
Then one notes that in addition to breaking what used to be a single disk into
two parts, they also have the gall to charge $9.00 for each. I immediately
called them to let them know I was displeased with their tactics and to request
that they stop selling Hack. After two phone calls from them (one with an
offer to split profits - something my employer would really not like me to get
into) I still said no to them marketing it. I am informed that they are doing
so well they are putting in a full page ad next issue. Well they promised to
get back in touch with me and attempt some sort of deal but I have not heard
from them since.
A call to the several government agencies gets the response that the only
action is to take the matter to court. I call AmigagWorld to request that
they prevent him from advertising and making money on my (and other persons
work) but am informed that they would continue to allow any advertising unless
they recieve a court order showing that he is not allowed to sell Hack.
Other miscelaneous facts:
1) The version he is selling is 1.0.1E - one that still has bugs in it.
A newer version has been shipping for quitet a while.
2) Both versions of the game fit well on a single disk.
3) The going price for diskettes is $6 or $7.
4) I am still shown on the header (with My phone number) that displays
when Hack is run (who do you think will get the calls at 2:00 AM?)
5) Both AmigaWorld and this company admit that I am the person who
placed this program on the Amiga.
Why am I Ticked?
I put a great amount of effort into producing this program and making it right.
As a result it has been well enjoyed by many people. I made no attempt to
make money off my work and do not wish someone else to profit from my work.
They even advertised my work without consulting me. (If it isn't so
good, then why did they choose it as the feature programs?)
This company is not offering anything that isn't available elsewhere. In
fact, they are making the program LESS available by splitting it up. (A
price tag of $18.00 for what normally is $6 or $7)
AmigaWorld is supporting this type of behavior in its failure to prohibit
the advertising.
Other companies have asked me if they could market Hack (3 so far) and the
response has always been NO! I am not the only person involved, we all
owe a lot to Jay Fenalson, Andries Brouwer, and Don Kneller. It in not
within my rights (or anyone else's) to make money marketing a collective
work in the interest of bettering the avaialable software. Just because
this company failed to check first is no excuse.
But wait, you might say that Fred Fish and Amazing Computing are doing the
same thing. No, Fred is recognized as THE public domain source for the
Amiga; Amazing Computing (and the Amigan) offer the disks as a service to
their readers. This company is selling the disks for the sole purpose
of making a buck.
I am not against the idea of Public Domain software by any means (look at
what I have put out on the Amiga) but I do have an investment in time and
effort to protect.
What can be done:
In my case it looks as if there are only a few choices:
1) Sue them! This can get expansive for me and them (In their case, they
can use the money they are making off my work!)
2) Stop producing freely redistributable software. This is an extreme
solution, but with AmigaWorld working against me it is a reasonable one.
3) Ignore the situation and let them walk all over me and anyone else
who is working for the betterment of the Amiga.
4) Force them to stop selling it and make the situation so others do not
attempt to do the same.
I strongly lean toward solution #2 - unfortunately with my employment
restrictions it means no more software on the Amiga. Hence I request
assistance on solution #4.
If you are opposed to the actions of AmigaWorld and The Public Domain Connection
then LET THEM KNOW:
It is people like this that are working to destroy what Freeware/Shareware/
Public Domain is all about.
Direct all flames to:
Amiga Public Domain Connection (415) 644-3167
Box 117, 1400 Shattuck Ave
Berkeley CA 94709
AmigaWorld (603) 924-9471
80 Elm Street
Peterborough, NH 03458
Disclaimer: My employer has nothing to do with me.
--
John A. Toebes, VIII usenet:..mcnc!rti-sel!sas!toebes
USnail: 235 Trillingham Ln, Cary NC 27511 BBS:(919)471-6436
Nick Flor
>
>Why am I Ticked?
>I put a great amount of effort into producing this program and making it right.
>As a result it has been well enjoyed by many people. I made no attempt to
>make money off my work and do not wish someone else to profit from my work.
>They even advertised my work without consulting me. (If it isn't so
>good, then why did they choose it as the feature programs?)
>
original author of the program. He must have put in at least the better
part of a year working on the thing. I think you should send E-mail
to him and make this fact known. He may be willing to take legal action.
Regardless, what they are doing is illegal, and I hope someone puts
them in their place.
Gonna thump you...
Nick
--
+ Disclaimer: The above opinions are my own, not necessarily my employers.
/ Nick V. Flor / ..hplabs!hp-sdd!nick / Hewlett Packard, San Diego Division
* "What's going down in this world, you got no idea. Believe me."
- The Comedian
Matt Dillon
I've always wondered if it was possible to win a case such as this
in court without the use of a lawyer. It seems to me that buying the product
from them and then simply entering that as proof (especially the fact that
your telephone and name are displayed without your permission!) would be
good enough.
Along the same lines, another way to combat such companies is to
simply make it unprofitable for them to sell it... Perhaps we could all
ban together and put in an add in AmigaWord along side the company's add
saying 'Hack V... etc... Public Domain and FREE'. We would end up spending
very little and the company quite a bit (on their adds).
Knowing this could happen all along, but now seeing it first hand,
I think I will start placing extremely explicit copyright notices on the
programs I send over PD.
BTW: It is always good to have some sort of copyright notice embedded
in the code and displayed, but I get tired of programs which ALWAYS display
the (C) notice... instead, it should only be displayed when you give it
wrong options, or no options, or in the 'version' command if it has one.
I get rather sick of Lattice's (C) notice's every time I compile something.
BLINK too.
This only applies to programs which do not have title screens.
When you have a title screen you always put your (C) notice there
(it's no extra hassel for the user).
-Matt
Joanne Albano
>
> Along the same lines, another way to combat such companies is to
> simply make it unprofitable for them to sell it... Perhaps we could all
> ban together and put in an add in AmigaWord along side the company's add
> saying 'Hack V... etc... Public Domain and FREE'.
I think Matt is on the right track here. Why not take a few
contributions to get the ball rolling (ie post an address and
Ill send some money) then include in the price of the Fish disks
enough extra charge to cover adds in the prominent AMIGA magazines
for freeware.
Along different lines...
THanks much Matt for the code it compiled happily.
Two comments though: Do you know if POPCLI is incompatible with your shell?
Whenever I try to run it I get an error message, something like cant open
new cli and then I crash shortly thereafter. Too bad I find that program
useful. Do you have any plans to implement ^Z and &, forground-background
in your shell?
Secondly, why do I run into problems when I merely try to cat a .login
file that has a fatal error whereas I can edit it?
Your documentation is quite clear and your shell is wonderful.
Thanks for all your contributions to netland.
rochester!ur-cvsvax!jea
John Wilkes
>
> ....
> Along the same lines, another way to combat such companies is to
>simply make it unprofitable for them to sell it... Perhaps we could all
>ban together and put in an add in AmigaWord along side the company's add
>saying 'Hack V... etc... Public Domain and FREE'. We would end up spending
>very little and the company quite a bit (on their adds).
>
Count me in for contributing to the cost of such an ad. The people
resposible for making money off of PD s/w should be hung by their
eylids until they die from lack of sleep.
How many others out there in net-land would contribute to bashing these
folks? C'mon, let's do it!
/John -- {wherever}!sun!elxsi!embos!wilkes
Jim Henry
I have expanded the distribution to include net.legal since I think this
case represents something that many have anticipated for some time and
will be of interest and concern to many people outside the amiga area.
I was tempted but refrained from including other micro groups. Perhaps
we can summarize what develops for those groups a little later.
To recap for those who are seeing this for the first time:
A company which redistributes PD software for profit is distributing an
adaptation of "Hack" for the Amiga.
The author of the adaptation, whose name and phone number appear in the
software being distributed, has contacted the company and asked them to
stop distributing the software. They offered to make a business
arrangement but have not done so at this time and the author is, for a
number of reasons, not really interested in making a deal.
The author has contacted AmigaWorld and asked them to refuse advertisements
which feature "Hack". They have said they will continue to accept ads
until they are shown a court order stating that the company cannot sell
the program.
The author's posting asked for suggestions on available remedies and listed
those he was considering.
I am focusing my remarks on what his legal remedies might be. Some
suggestions of other remedies have been made and may well be the best
course of action.
The first legal step would seem to be establishing that the author does
have a legal ownership of the software. This probably means a proper
copyright. If he does not have a proper copyright, he may be able to
remedy the copyright. There are a number of good books that cover how to
secure a valid copyright. I have read and would recommend Remer's Legal
Care for Your Software from Nolo Press (about $20).
I believe there are a number of pre-suit steps that can be taken to let
someone know you are serious about defending your copyright. I also
believe that it is correct that you must undertake the defense of your own
copyright. I defer to the books or to someone more knowledgeable for
details here.
The real crux of the legal problem as I see it is that authors who wish to
make a true PD contribution, a selfless donation of software to the
computing community, have no economic support to use for defense of a
copyright. Is a copyright that is not being used to protect an economic
position worthless? The pat answer for prevention of profiteering on PD
work has been copyright. Now we have an opportunity to see if it will
work. How should one defend a copyright given that there is no source of
money for the defense?
The only legal solution I can think of is the use of small claims court.
This minimizes, but does not eliminate, the economic hardship placed on the
PD copyright holder. It also prevents the PD profiteer from gaining much
advantage from his economically superior position, although he still has an
advantage. Would anyone care to comment on whether copyright infringement
could be brought to small claims court and how it might be most effectively
persued?
Disclaimers: These are personal opinions. They are in no way associated
with my employer, the Rand Corp. I am not an attorney and nothing
contained in this message should be considered as legal advice.
Marnix van Ammers
>
>First a little background:
>I opened up the latest issue of AmigaWorld to find an advertisement for
>a company in CA advertising HACK for sale. Claiming to be 'The Public Domain
>Connection', they list 2 disks containing Hack:
>001: Hack. Incredible graphics version.
>002: Hack. Text version, for Connoisseurs.
>
>They even advertised my work without consulting me. (If it isn't so
>good, then why did they choose it as the feature programs?)
>
>This company is not offering anything that isn't available elsewhere. In
>fact, they are making the program LESS available by splitting it up. (A
>price tag of $18.00 for what normally is $6 or $7)
>
"They" is one person, Andrew Klineman (spelling may not be correct).
After reading John's article I decided to call this company and
complain. It seems to be run by one person, a senior at Berkeley.
He assured me that he is not distributing Hack because John had
objected and because his version wasn't current.
I don't know this guy, but he sounded sincere in that he doesn't
want to take anyone else's deserved profits. He'd like to distribute
shareware and include notices showing to whom contributions should be
sent.
He didn't have access to USENET, so I tried to send John's
article to his Amiga, but his modem was apparently not on
auto answer and I didn't have the time to wait for him to
look up new option settings.
Anyway, he said he'd call John, so I hope John will straighten Andrew
out on what he can and cannot distribute for profit, and under what
conditions.
After John's plea I had expected that this guy would have been
deluged with complaints. I am quite dissapointed that I was the
only one who had complained. We ought to stick together and help
each other on matters like this!
Colin Plumb
Couldn't it simply be that an author wants to have a say in what people do
with his/her work? The GNU system is protected by a copyright stipulation
which explicitly states that you are *NOT* allowed to make money selling GNU or
a derivative work. Yuo may only charge distribution costs, and may not
interfere in *any* way with what people do with it later. (This includes
forbidding liscencing agreements, copy protection, and (I *love* this) keeping
the source code private.)
I'm sure Richard Stallman looked into the pertinent legalities, and didn't find
any problems. (Or he'd do something else (maybe charging a penny for it).)
Would anyone with more background in the subject like to comment on this?
-Colin Plumb (ccp...@watnot.UUCP)
"Bugs: This man page is confusing."
John Gilmore
upset that The Public Domain Software Connection is selling "his" version
of Hack, which he posted to the net for worldwide distribution, for $9,
which includes a $7 floppy disk.]
I don't understand the upset.
If you make something that is in the public domain (as legally defined),
this means that you relinquish ownership and give ownership to "the public".
Anyone can do anything with public domain stuff, including gulling people
into paying money for things that they can get for free.
I write public domain software myself (for the Unix community). I
write it because I want to improve the world and this is my little way
of helping. I would be glad if somebody started selling it, either as
part of their Unix system or separately. After all, if these people
can make money at it, my free distribution system is clearly not
reaching everybody, so they are actually doing me a service by
spreading my product far and wide.
If you want to make money at software, don't give it away for free!
If you give it away for free, don't complain if people copy it for fees,
sell it, or even (gasp!) fix bugs and offer support to customers who buy it.
Now software comes in all different categories these days. Much stuff
that is claimed to be "public domain" is actually not. It contains a
copyright notice and a note that anyone can redistribute it. Sometimes
there are conditions on this. I call this stuff "freely redistributable"
and it's almost as good as PD, if it comes without screwy conditions.
I think that anybody writing stuff to give away should get their
motives clear before they start. Are you trying to improve the world?
Trying to put your name before the public? Giving away a brain damaged
version of something you will commercialize? Seeing how far you can
push the hardware and are proud of how far you got? Be sure what you
want, and then set up your copyright (if any) and conditions (if any)
to make it happen.
It happens that I have a copy of Hack 1.0.1 for the Amiga here; it came
over the net and I saved it. I looked in the source to check the
copyrights. Just about every module is copyrighted by this notice:
/* Copyright (c) Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam, 1984. */
One module, hack.graphics.c, is:
/* Copyright (c) John A. Toebes, VIII 1986 */
There are no indications about whether it can be redistributed, but the
fact that it was posted to the Usenet originally (before John's port)
and then he posted it again, would weigh heavily in a court.
Technically the Stichting Mathematisch Centrum owns the work, so they
could complain about this Hack being sold, but John can only control
the distribution of his one module. I presume that if The Public Domain
Connection really wanted to make a product out of it, they could rewrite
that one file; it's only about 2K of source.
In summary, John has a copyright on a small bit of the code. He wants
to use this as leverage to control whether a company (which sounds like
a one man operation) can distribute the whole piece of publicly
available software, to people who aren't lucky enough to be on Usenet
and don't want to pay for Compuserve or don't belong to a user's
group. He doesn't want to sell it himself, he doesn't mind "friends"
selling it, but he minds "random people" selling it, or he is unwilling
for it to be sold for $9 to the same people who could get it for $8
from his friends. He neglects to mention in his flame that 99% of the
work was done by other people, who freely gave their efforts to him and
everyone else. He has a slight legal leg to stand on, but personally I
think is confused about what he wants and should think about it before
he flames again, or ports any other software around. I think his
statement "It is people like this that are working to destroy what
freeware/shareware/public domain is all about" applies more to himself
than to The Public Domain Connection.
By the way. I maintain a large (160MB) archive of public domain
software. It's a hell of a lot of work to maintain this and keep it up
to date with all the new software and new releases, index it, keep
backup copies, etc, not to mention the cost of the disk space it
takes. If I was in a commercial mood I might feel like offering a
redistribution service to the public. I currently scan
net.wanted.sources and help people out for free. But if I really tried
to recover my costs, I'd charge a lot more then $2 plus media cost!
Hell, I charge my consulting clients $120/hr and the rates go UP for
shitwork like maintaining aging software, copying disks and tapes, etc.
If you are really interested in a well thought out rationale for "why I
am putting this software into the world" and a set of conditions that
match, see the GNU Manifesto and GNU copying rules. You don't have to
agree with Richard Stallman to appreciate that he knows what he is doing
and why he is doing it -- and how to get there. I can send you a copy
if you want one.
--
John Gilmore {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu jgil...@lll-crg.arpa
"I can't think of a better way for the War Dept to spend money than to
subsidize the education of teenage system hackers by creating the Arpanet."
Mike Wingrove
>I'm not sure that a copyright needs to be protecting financial interests.
Last night, here at U of W, there was a lecture given by a rather knowledgable
lawyer on topics relating to software. Most of the lecture was related to an
engineers liablility with respect to the use, and design of software, but
he also spoke about software protection.
During the software protection part of the talk I posed exactly the question
under discussion here to him. He said "The copyright would still be valid
even on a piece of freely distibutable software." Basically the copyright
gives the owner the power of dictating who, and under what terms a piece
of intellectual property (most commonly in written form. Canada's copyright
laws don't specifically mention software YET.) can be reproduced/distributed.
This means that if someone wants to copy a PD program, unless it contains
a notice saying that anyone can copy it, then, theoretically, it would still
be necessary to get the author's permission.
Another way of stating this is that as well as a copyright notice, PD software
should list the allowable terms of distribution, in addition to a copyright
notice. Otherwise nobody is really alowed to copy/distribute it legally.
This seemed to make good sense to me.
Mike Wingrove
C. C. N. G.
Dept of Elec. Eng.
U of Waterloo
Godfrey Lee
>I opened up the latest issue of AmigaWorld to find an advertisement for
>a company in CA advertising HACK for sale. Claiming to be 'The Public Domain
>Connection', they list 2 disks containing Hack:
>001: Hack. Incredible graphics version.
>002: Hack. Text version, for Connoisseurs.
>
...
>What can be done:
>
>In my case it looks as if there are only a few choices:
> 1) Sue them! This can get expansive for me and them (In their case, they
>can use the money they are making off my work!)
> 2) Stop producing freely redistributable software. This is an extreme
>solution, but with AmigaWorld working against me it is a reasonable one.
> 3) Ignore the situation and let them walk all over me and anyone else
>who is working for the betterment of the Amiga.
> 4) Force them to stop selling it and make the situation so others do not
>attempt to do the same.
>
>I strongly lean toward solution #2 - unfortunately with my employment
>restrictions it means no more software on the Amiga. Hence I request
>assistance on solution #4.
I hope that you do not choose #2, since that will be letting them destroy
the wonderful exchanges that happen here. We should probably take precautions
in the future in safeguarding our rights to our own work, without limiting
distribution.
I support the idea of a letter campaign, to both the company (probably a waste
of time), as well as to the magazines. Write them as letters to the editor,
see if they have the guts to publish it. If not, I would be willing to
contribute to putting in an open letter as an ad, they can't refuse that!
The only long term solution is probably to establish a distributor for
the free software, with the proper spirit (no profit - or as Fred Fish
puts it: low profit), and compete openly.
[There is free enterprise for you!]
--
--------------------------------------
Godfrey Lee
Cognos Incorporated
3755 Riverside Drive
Ottawa, Ontario
CANADA K1G 3N3
(613) 738-1440
decvax!utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!cognos!glee
--------------------------------------
Howard Hull
> [Net.sources.d folks, see <2...@sas.UUCP> for context. John Toebes is
> upset that The Public Domain Software Connection is selling "his" version
> of Hack, which he posted to the net for worldwide distribution, for $9,
> which includes a $7 floppy disk.]
>
> I don't understand the upset.
I do. I even have a way to make sure that you will, too. I'll just go
through all my USENET tapes until I find something YOU wrote, add a bunch
of really great code, complete with whatever bugs just come naturally, and
then I'll make sure I don't delete YOUR telephone number from it. Of course,
I'll also make sure that it doesn't have mine. Of course, I'm not serious
about what I just said; I wouldn't ever do that to you, John. But now I do
wonder: can you get somebody for anguish caused to you by their publishing
YOUR telephone number in a privately distributed document? Hmmmmn...
Howard Hull
[If yet unproven concepts are outlawed in the range of discussion...
...Then only the deranged will discuss yet unproven concepts]
{ucbvax!hplabs | decvax!noao | mcvax!seismo | ihnp4!seismo} !hao!hull