[Pipet Devel] U.S. Copyright Office, Copyright Basics (Circular 1)

[J.W. Bizzaro]

Here is some information about US copyright:

  http://www.loc.gov/copyright/circs/circ1.html

It's pretty simple.  Notice of copyright and registration are NOT required,
but registration may be helpful if there are legal problems.  It also mentions
joint authorship and international works.  Good reading ;-)

Basically, we want to give notice of copyright for each release of Piper.  And
for every new contributor, unless the person waives their copyright, we need
to list all authors and the earliest year of collaboration.  So, for example,
when we combined code bases, it was 2000, and the copyright would read
(alphabetical order):

  Copyright (C) 2000 J.W. Bizzaro
                     Brad Chapman
                     Deanne Taylor
                     Jean-Marc Valin
                     Jarl van Katwijk

But, if we got a new contributor in 2001, John Doe, the notice would read:

  Copyright (C) 2001 J.W. Bizzaro
                     Brad Chapman
                     Deanne Taylor
                     John Doe
                     Jean-Marc Valin
                     Jarl van Katwijk

The law says that the copyright is enforced for 70 years after the death of
the last surviving author.  So, shall we place bets?  ;-)

Cheers.
Jeff