http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSL2768807220080328
John Griggs Thompson of the United States and Jacques Tits of France were awarded the Abels prize (sharing $1.2 million) on 3-27-2008 for their work in algebra and group theory.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Copyright law as it pertains to mathematics
This is a brief survey on copyright law, as it pertains to mathematicians. It does not cover other aspects of intellectual property law, such as laws governing patents, trade secrets, and so on (see for example, [K]). The basic reference is the excellent book by Leaffer [L].
I am not a lawyer and this is not meant as legal advice. However, I think everyone would benefit from more information and discussion of copyright law, so please leave comments if you have something to add.
U.S. copyright law applies to writings, or "physical renderings", produced by an author. For this article, we assume the author is a U. S. citizen and the work was produced on U. S. soil. However, a "writing" is not assumed to be human-readable, so, for example, a software program in executable binary form, or "object code", is included [L], section 3.06. The owner of the copyright of a work has the exclusive right for
* reproduce or copy the work,
* prepare derivative works,
* distribute the work,
* perform the work publically,
* display the work publically.
Before explaining these terms, exceptions to these rights, and how these rights relate especially to mathematical works, we discuss works for which copyright law cannot be applied. The law is designed to protect creative written works.
For the owner of a creative mathematical work, whether it is an article or a piece of software, we explain next what these rights mean.
Reproduction: A reproduction is to fix a copy in a tangible and relatively permanent form, such as a xerox copy or a file on a computer (though a copy stored in your cache is exempted). Aside from non-profit, educational, government, or "fair use", the copyright holder have the sole right to make unlimited copies of your work. For example, if you publish a paper or book, you often sign over your copyright to a publisher. If anyone could make a copy of your article freely, the commercial interest of the publisher would disappear. Similarly, if you wrote a mathematical software program which you wanted to market, you would want to restrict the copies of the program to those who paid for it. A research paper downloaded from the internet and then emailed to a colleague is an example of a reproduction.
However, there is a fair use exception to copyright law regarding copying for personal use if you are a scholar (at a non-profit institute) or the educational use of your students if you are a teacher (at a non-profit institute). These do not apply to commercial think-tanks or to commercial training centers. The guidelines are different for research than for educational use, but the basic idea is to copy no more than is necessary. The guidelines for education are more strict. Generally, 1000 words or 10\% of the material (the minimum of the two) are recommended limits [L], section 10.12.
Derivative works: Only the copyright holder can create a new work which is adapted from the original but which contains copyrightable modifications. For example, if you wrote a mathematical textbook and you retained its copyrights, then only you have the right to create a translation into another language or a second edition. Conversely, if you wrote a mathematical software program which you wanted to give away for free but subject to the open source General Public License (GPL), then you want to restrict the modifications or derivations of your program to those who publically redistribute the modified program under the same open source terms. This is what the carefully crafted legal language of the GPL does for you [F], [W]. (An example of such a project is the SAGE software program [S].)
Distribution: A work is distributed if it is made available to the "public" in some form. For example, a copy in a public library or a file posted on a world-accessible internet site are publically distributed. However, defining the term "public" precisely in this context is a technical legal matter, for which we refer to [L], section 8.13.
Performance and display rights generally refer to works of drama or art, and probably less useful to a mathematician. For these rights, we only mention that a talk on a scholarly paper could be a performance. Legally, such a performance does not constitute a "public distribution" or "reproduction" of the paper itself.
References:
[F] Free Software Foundation, http://www.fsf.org
[K] B. Klemens, Math you can't use,
Brooksings Institute Press, Washington DC, 2006.
[L] M. Leaffer, Understanding copyright law, 4th edition, LexisNexis, 2005.
[S] Sage mathematical software, http://www.sagemath.org
[W] M. Webblink, Understanding Open Source Software,
http://www.nswscl.org.au/journal/51/Mark_H_Webbink.html
I am not a lawyer and this is not meant as legal advice. However, I think everyone would benefit from more information and discussion of copyright law, so please leave comments if you have something to add.
U.S. copyright law applies to writings, or "physical renderings", produced by an author. For this article, we assume the author is a U. S. citizen and the work was produced on U. S. soil. However, a "writing" is not assumed to be human-readable, so, for example, a software program in executable binary form, or "object code", is included [L], section 3.06. The owner of the copyright of a work has the exclusive right for
* reproduce or copy the work,
* prepare derivative works,
* distribute the work,
* perform the work publically,
* display the work publically.
Before explaining these terms, exceptions to these rights, and how these rights relate especially to mathematical works, we discuss works for which copyright law cannot be applied. The law is designed to protect creative written works.
Ideas which are only communicated oraly are generally not subject to copyright, as they have not been "physically rendered." If you tell a friend your unwritten idea of how to solve the Riemann hypothesis, who proceeds to write up the idea and publish it, feel flattered because copyright law won't help you.
An unoriginal work, or a work "mechanically produced", say by a computer program whose use requires no originality, are not copyrightable (more precisely, are not subject to a separate copyright - the program could, for example, output copyrighted elements). For example, the output of an automatic theorem proving program is not copyrightable. On the other hand, the output of
an image processing program which takes an image and applies a de-noising algorithm is a "mechanical" derivation of the original image, so the copyright is the same as that of the original.
Data is not copyrightable. It doesn't matter how much money or man power it took to discover, collect, or obtain it. (However, there are various laws which can be used to protect such intellectual property, such as trade secret laws.) In some cases, a creative arrangement of the data itself is copyrightable, even if the data itself is not.
Works in the public domain (in particular most "official" works by the U. S. government), are not copyrightable. All written works eventually pass into the public domain. Due to the variety of copyright laws which have been passed in the United States over the years, the duration of copyright depends on when the work was written, if it is a joint work (or a "work for hire") or not, and various other factors. However, life plus 50 years is a minimum, according to the Berne convention, so that will apply in most cases.
For the owner of a creative mathematical work, whether it is an article or a piece of software, we explain next what these rights mean.
Reproduction: A reproduction is to fix a copy in a tangible and relatively permanent form, such as a xerox copy or a file on a computer (though a copy stored in your cache is exempted). Aside from non-profit, educational, government, or "fair use", the copyright holder have the sole right to make unlimited copies of your work. For example, if you publish a paper or book, you often sign over your copyright to a publisher. If anyone could make a copy of your article freely, the commercial interest of the publisher would disappear. Similarly, if you wrote a mathematical software program which you wanted to market, you would want to restrict the copies of the program to those who paid for it. A research paper downloaded from the internet and then emailed to a colleague is an example of a reproduction.
However, there is a fair use exception to copyright law regarding copying for personal use if you are a scholar (at a non-profit institute) or the educational use of your students if you are a teacher (at a non-profit institute). These do not apply to commercial think-tanks or to commercial training centers. The guidelines are different for research than for educational use, but the basic idea is to copy no more than is necessary. The guidelines for education are more strict. Generally, 1000 words or 10\% of the material (the minimum of the two) are recommended limits [L], section 10.12.
Derivative works: Only the copyright holder can create a new work which is adapted from the original but which contains copyrightable modifications. For example, if you wrote a mathematical textbook and you retained its copyrights, then only you have the right to create a translation into another language or a second edition. Conversely, if you wrote a mathematical software program which you wanted to give away for free but subject to the open source General Public License (GPL), then you want to restrict the modifications or derivations of your program to those who publically redistribute the modified program under the same open source terms. This is what the carefully crafted legal language of the GPL does for you [F], [W]. (An example of such a project is the SAGE software program [S].)
Distribution: A work is distributed if it is made available to the "public" in some form. For example, a copy in a public library or a file posted on a world-accessible internet site are publically distributed. However, defining the term "public" precisely in this context is a technical legal matter, for which we refer to [L], section 8.13.
Performance and display rights generally refer to works of drama or art, and probably less useful to a mathematician. For these rights, we only mention that a talk on a scholarly paper could be a performance. Legally, such a performance does not constitute a "public distribution" or "reproduction" of the paper itself.
References:
[F] Free Software Foundation, http://www.fsf.org
[K] B. Klemens, Math you can't use,
Brooksings Institute Press, Washington DC, 2006.
[L] M. Leaffer, Understanding copyright law, 4th edition, LexisNexis, 2005.
[S] Sage mathematical software, http://www.sagemath.org
[W] M. Webblink, Understanding Open Source Software,
http://www.nswscl.org.au/journal/51/Mark_H_Webbink.html
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