On Fri, 7 Jul 2006, Beartooth wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Jul 2000, Lars Eighner wrote:
>
>> ...the top right because some of the ones Nesbitt included are of dubious
>> value (e.g. including a copyright line suggests previous publication).
>
> Somebody should check current law, because it's been twenty-odd years
> since I was a copyright examiner in the Copyright Office at the Library of
> Congress; so I could be wrong here.
>
> One of the things I don't think *could* have changed is that
> copyright *exists* as of the time a work is "fixed"
Exactly! Which is why professionals do not go to the trouble and expense
of registering the copyright and why a professional writer sending a
submission to a professional editor does not put a copyright notice on a
manuscript. When a professinal editor finds a copyright notice on a
manuscript there is only one of two reasons it could be there:
1) The work has been previously published (and the notice is on the
manuscript so it can be recited properly if the work is reprinted)
or
2) The work was sent by a vain and defensive amateur who has not bothered to
disturb a single one of the dozens of books about the business of
professional writing that are making the shelves groan at the public
library.
> -- i.e., has become a specific draft -- regardless whether any other
> sentient entity has ever perceived it, or ever does. What's more, you can
> register your claim in it, *without* having to publish it first; many
> people do.
Yes, they do. It's really rather sad. But if they can afford their little
game of let's-pretend-we're-authors, I suppose no one else is harmed, and
after all, they could be spending their money on more vicious habits.
>
> See www.copyright.gov
>
>
-- Lars Eighner eighner@io.com lars@larseighner.com http://www.larseighner.com/index.html 8800 N IH35 APT 1191 AUSTIN TX 78753-5266 ----------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to abiword-user-request@abisource.com with the word unsubscribe in the message body.Received on Sat Jul 8 08:57:16 2006
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