🚀 go-pugleaf

Mark Griffith wrote:

> Well, the courts have always shown that free speech does not mean one
> can freely promote the breaking of the law.

Bah. Of course one can freely promote breaking the law. It has long
been the case in this nation that simply because an act is treated as
law, it may not necessarily be such. I feel that many, if not most,
of the pseudo-laws of this nation have no constitutional basis, and I
happily go about saying so and opposing their enforcement. Such is one
of our most basic rights, politically. Free speech doesn't mean
protecting the speech you agree with. It means protecting the speech
you hate. That's why the Indiana chapter of the ACLU sued to permit
the Klu Klux Klan to rally on the capital steps.

As for the legal ramifications of distributing the COCO ROM code, I
doubt that there would be any. As someone else mentioned, the ROM
code is no longer being sold. The purpose of copyright law in
commercial trade is to protect a product's selling value to the
owner. It is not to prevent the distribution of intellectual
property. Therefore, since Tandy will not sell their copyrighted
code, they have little valid compelling interest to prevent the free
distribution thereof. Would a court award damages to Tandy? Probably
not, since Tandy suffered no loss.

This is not to say that I condone giving away copyrighted material,
because I surely do not. Specifically, I don't think that it is a
moral move to give away the COCO ROM code to somebody unless they
already own a machine. However, I do feel that blind adherence to the
law is silly. We must look for the reason behind the law, and if we
respect the reason, obey the law.

> If you need a demonstration of this, all I need to do is send a copy
> of your messages to your university e-mail postmaster and he'll have
> your BITNET access revoked.

This I seriously doubt. Few administrators are anal enough to punish a
user for expressing an opinion. If Darren were to intentionally send
copyrighted code through the University gateway, he'd probably get his
accounts nuked. However, no corpus delicti, no punishment.

Darren wrote:

> Anyone wishing to contact my University E-Mail postmaster need only
> send mail to the following:
>    POSTMAS@TRANSY.BITNET--- John Snell
>    HINKLE@TRANSY.BITNET --- Allen Hinkle

And I'm sure they'd get a good laugh out of it.

Larry
--
Lawrence Weeks        (800) BUG-CRAY, x35526    fax (612) 683-5307
Cray Research, Inc.   Inet: weeksl@cray.com     "Audaces fortuna juvat."