Re: Credit in a GZG Publication

At 01:42 PM 9/26/96 -0400, you wrote:
>Under American copyright laws, if a person writes something, she has
the 
>copyright; i.e., there's no implied waiver of copyright (at least not
by 
>subscribing to an email list).  

I believe this is in the Berne Convention, to which I think every
country of
every member of this group belongs.

>Tuffley is correct to be worried about the 
>legal implications.  The easiest thing to do would probably be for him
to 
>offer to "buy" any ideas that he wants to use for $1, which would 
>probably protect him.	Alternatively, he might note that unless GZG 
>starts making a whole lot of cash, it's unlikely that any one is going
to 
>have a financial incentive sufficient to override their morals.

Okay, but what if I came up with a really neat way of doing true vector
movement in FT and Jon uses it in a supplement. Later, I write an SF
ship
combat game of my own (this is all hypothetical) and use the same
passage of
text for the rule. Who's rule is it? Although it's unlikely that I could
make any money from suing Jon, I get free legal advice (my wife's a law
clerk) and I could make life difficult enough for Jon that he might have
to
fold his business to pay for legal expenses. It's all very hypothetical
(and
I'd never think of doing it) but it's possible.

The easiest way around it, if everyone wants to, is to SPECIFICALLY
state in
your posting that you give first publication rights to Jon Tuffley. You
can
state that your payment for such an act is mention in the credits of his
book. Then Jon can either copy freely and include you in the credits, or
do
as he has been.

If anyone is interested in this, I can get my wife to come up with a
suitable legal clause to cover it. It's copyright law, so it's about as
universal as laws get (which is to say, not really), but because we're
Canadian, there are actually cases of Canadian law using British and
American precidents so we're as close to a legal go-between as you're
likely
to see.

Any thoughts on this?

Allan Goodall:	agoodall@sympatico.ca 
"You'll want to hear about my new obsession.
 I'm riding high upon a deep depression. 
 I'm only happy when it rains."    - Garbage