Word: copyright
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...When Pakistanis came in for, say, Lotus 1-2-3, they were sold clean, uncontaminated copies. But foreigners, particularly Americans, were given virus-ridden versions. Why the special treatment for outsiders? The brothers' somewhat confused rationalization hinges on a loophole in Pakistani law. According to Basit, copyright protection in Pakistan does not extend to computer software. Therefore, he says, it is not illegal for local citizens to trade in bootleg disks; technically, they are not engaged in software piracy. Then why infect American buyers? "Because you are pirating," says Basit. "You must be punished...
Witness the Columbia football team. For each game, the Lions invented new ways to lose. (Unfortunately, Columbia didn't copyright its playbook, 101 Ways to Fumble and Bumble Your Way to Sports Infamy, and now the Baltimore Orioles are stealing passages from it right and left...
Salinger sued. The lower court found that Hamilton had made "fair use" of the letters. But the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York reversed the ruling in a decision that not only reinforced existing copyright law but also limited the manner in which a writer could describe copyrighted material in his own words. Hamilton went reeling back to his writing table, and the publishing business went into a tizzy. "Biography is a legitimate literary pursuit," says Jason Epstein, Hamilton's editor at Random House. "Salinger's reluctance to be written about, if ceded, could threaten the whole genre...
Noting that 40% of the disputed manuscript's pages contained quoted and paraphrased materials, Copyright Lawyer Roger Zissu sees a more limited peril. "Most historians and biographers don't write books that are that dependent on the subject's correspondence," says Zissu, who was not involved in the case but who successfully represented Gerald Ford's publishers when they sued the Nation magazine for printing key excerpts from the former President's unpublished memoirs...
Citing an "enormous chilling effect" from the decision, Random House Lawyer Gerald Hollingsworth indicates that Scott Donaldson's forthcoming biography of John Cheever has been shorn of some of Cheever's illustrative and idiosyncratic phrases. Last year Macmillan shelved The Binghams of Louisville after a copyright challenge from Family Patriarch Barry Bingham Sr., former head of the Louisville Courier-Journal media empire...