RE: Two questions about Copyright notices

["Robart, Kay" <Kay -dot- Robart -at- tea -dot- state -dot- tx -dot- us>]

The changes between years have to be significant to claim a new
copyright date, not just a few punctuation marks, and it is against the
law to claim a copyright before the document has been published. 

Think about it. Suppose two different writers publish the same novel.
The one with the earlier copyright is going to have the rights to the
material unless the other one can prove some prior ownership (like a
dated copy inside a sealed envelope and postmarked or a dated copy in
the agent's records) or stealing or something. This obviously isn't much
of a problem for computer documents, but for fiction it's another story
(not to be punny).

Copyright wasn't really designed with the idea of companies copyrighting
an updated manual every six months as opposed to protecting the rights
of an author who might put out a different edition once or twice, adding
new prefaces or making significant corrections and additions. An author
or an author's family might care that he or she still has rights after
50 years, but who cares about a 50-year-old computer manual?


-----Original Message-----
From: McLauchlan, Kevin [mailto:Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2010 3:31 PM
To: Robart, Kay; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: RE: Two questions about Copyright notices

Thanks.

I thought there was a concern in the OTHER direction, that 
you (society) didn't want people changing one word or 
punctuation mark every few years, slapping a new date on 
the document, and thereby restarting their copyright 
period. 

 - Kevin


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