🚀 go-pugleaf

From: pmoloney@unix1.tcd.ie (Paul Michael Moloney)
>That last line is interesting. I don't know much about law, but I've heard 
>it claimed, at least in Ireland, that copyright exists on something you've 
>written the moment you write it. So keeping files of writing from a user is 
>in effect illegal. So should a sysadmin at least give a user whose account 
>has been suspended some way of retrieving their files, at least hard copies 
>of them?

[Hang on it gets more interesting...

Although I agree with the sentiment (don't get me wrong), I think
you're making a bit of a leap there. If I wrote a poem on your car I
don't think there's much I could do about stopping you from driving
off with it.

You may own the copyright (preventing me from publishing it) but I
doubt there'd be much sympathy if you never provided yourself with a
reasonable copy of your own work.

It could be argued that this would be more similar to allowing you
back in your own office after having been fired to retrieve personal
effects, but forget copyright, that only says who may publish your
work, basically. It's an interesting argument, but tenuous.

You're correct about the automatic copyright, as per the Berne
Convention (which the USA is also a signatory to), one no longer has
to explicitly put a copyright onto a work for it to be considered
copyrighted (note, however, that although such a work is unarguably
yours in such a case in the USA at least you would be pretty much
limited to cease and desist orders if you found someone using it,
unless it's registered you can't (*generally*, this is law, not
science) collect monetary damages for misuse.

HOWEVER, if you did work on a University (or other workplace) computer
there could be claims to that work by the University. It depends on a
lot of things which would be hard to go into here.

But if it was related to what you were paid for or received grant
monies for then ownership could be at least partially in dispute and
fear that you would retrieve a copy and then destroy it is, well, it's
within the realm of sanity. For example, course notes or exercises
could quite legitimately be claimed by the University, assuming you
were paid to teach the particular course.

 ...about here]

Unfortunately more than one University has used denial of access to
computer files as a way of punishing or trying to force some political
concession out of a person.

I know of one case where a professor filed a discrimination suit
against the university and they immediately removed her access and,
hence, access to a book she was writing. And used this to try to
leverage a settlement out of her.

Needless to say this is one reason personal computers can be very
popular around universities, regardless of all the promised
convenience of centralized systems.

It's not said out loud very often, however. But I bet a lot of you
know profs who's only computer they are interested in is the personal
computer they keep at home (other than perhaps logging in to a central
computer for email etc.)

Now you know why.
-- 
        -Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die    | bzs@world.std.com          | uunet!world!bzs
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202        | Login: 617-739-WRLD