scott wrote:
>> The copyright. The right to prevent other people from making copies 
>> without your permission.
> 
> All I'm saying is that I don't see how you can keep that right when your 
> work is freely available in the first place.

It seems pretty easy to me. Mine is the only server it may be served from. I 
have to authorize the printer to make more copies of the book. If I stop 
broadcasting it, no more copies are created.  You're not allowed to 
photograph my outdoor statue. (I'll grant that last one would be really hard 
to enforce, but by no means impossible or incomprehensible.)

> If it went to court in such a situation, how would the judge decide how 
> much money the author had lost by this "unlawful" copying of the work?

That's irrelevant. In any case, if you made money distributing it yourself 
(say, selling postcards of the outdoor statue), the amount I could win would 
seem easy to calculate.

However, it's irrelevant, because the question isn't "how much am I 
damaged." The question is "how can you copyright an outdoor artwork."

How much is someone damaged if I take a GPL program that's freely available 
without me having to agree to anything, I add features to it, and I 
distribute the new executable without releasing the source?

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Understanding the structure of the universe
    via religion is like understanding the
     structure of computers via Tron.

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