[ale] [WAY OT]Reverse Engineering MS Visual Basic Applications

[Benjamin Scherrey]

	Unless you are an employee (and therefore the product is a work for hire owned by the 
employer) the copyright is automatically held by the creator of the work and must be explicitly 
transferred to the buying party. You'd be surprised how much software written is owned by the 
contractors (or contracting agency) and no-one, including the contractors, are even aware of it 
because there were no copyright assignments in place and people are generally ignorant of this 
fact.

	If you think the buyer should have all the rights then you would also believe that you own 
the copyrights to books and music that you buy. That's absurd of course because copyright is not 
about a tangible asset but about intellectual property - ownership of your creation and ideas. More 
often than not the buyer is purchasing a license to use this property rather than transfer of the 
property itself. Capitalist economies are fundamentally driven by this idea which seeks to reward 
and incentify those who create new ideas that benefit society and create new wealth.

	Ben Scherrey

9/29/2003 6:16:01 PM, "ChangingLINKS.com" <x3 at ChangingLINKS.com> wrote:

>> Not to chide anyone, but if someone pays to have software written for
>> them, THEY OWN IT, not the writers. The company who writes it, unless
>> they are devious and the client doesn't read the the agreement and
>> PROTEST LOUDLY, should have no more claim to ownership of the code than
>> the shoemaker does to the shoes on my feet.
>
>Wasn't someone on this list saying that by default it is the opposite?
>I thought the law was that the writer had ownership/copyright and the buyer 
>could not resell unless there was a contract that shows the buyer had the 
>rights?
>
>Personally, I think that the buyer should have all of the rights - just as the 
>programmer should have all of the rights to the money they get paid. 
>-- 
>Wishing you Happiness, Joy and Laughter,
>Drew Brown
>http://www.ChangingLINKS.com
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