Best way to protect my new commercial software.

[Paul Boddie]

On 18 Des, 22:38, Steven D'Aprano <st... at REMOVE-THIS-
cybersource.com.au> wrote:
>
> I dare say that European countries which have had automatic copyright
> longer than the US have seen far more of their national heritage (early
> film, photographs and the like) rot away.

Indeed. One of the most famous and ridiculous cases is that of the
Domesday Project: a nationwide survey of Britain in the spirit of the
Domesday Book (which was 900 years old at the time of the endeavour),
where the newly gathered, late twentieth century information was in
danger of becoming unrecoverable due to the scarcity of parts for, and
knowledge about, the technology employed (now just over 20 years old).
This site provides an overview of the recovery process and information
about the history of the project:

http://www.si.umich.edu/CAMILEON/domesday/domesday.html

Although other technical discussions and perspectives have been
published about the project [1,2], the most pertinent issue to this
particular discussion is mentioned here:

"Many different copyright owners contributed a range of different
types of data to the Domesday Project for inclusion on the discs.
Unfortunately it is unclear as to exactly who contributed and under
what circumstances the data in question can be used."

http://www.si.umich.edu/CAMILEON/domesday/ipr.html

In many ways, those acting to preserve the contents of the Domesday
Project were able to act with some pretty large organisations watching
their backs. Others may not be as fortunate, as was pointed out.

Paul

P.S. Steven's post is indeed highly informative reading for those
willing to consider more thoroughly the nature and impact of
copyright.

[1] http://www.atsf.co.uk/dottext/domesday.html
[2] http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue36/tna/