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> I started programming in 1969. > In fact, not only was selling software hard, but you could not copyright Was that the actual legal situation in 1969 - that

> I started programming in 1969. > In fact, not only was selling software hard, but you could not copyright Was that the actual legal situation in 1969 - that software could not be copyrighted? I totally find it believable that, in 1969, the author believed that - but was his belief legally accurate?

aldto 3y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CONTU https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CONTU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_copyright#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_copyright#History Strange you don't believe Jon Hall, but willing to believe some random stranger on social media.
- skissane 3y ago
  > Strange you don't believe Jon Hall, but willing to believe some random stranger on social media. I'm not aware that Jon Hall would claim any particular expertise or interest in legal history, whereas there may well be "some random strangers on social media" who do. Also, this is a matter which can be established by citing sources which Jon Hall might be unfamiliar with (for the simple reason that the topic might never have interested him sufficiently for him to research it.)
  - aldto 3y ago
    Fair enough. My apologies.
    - skissane 3y ago
      Thank you for your kind reply, apology gladly accepted :)
kemitchell 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_copyright#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_copyright#History I wasn't practicing law back then, but my secondhand understanding is that while it wasn't clear that copyright would apply to software, or how, savvy players largely expected some kind of protection for written software beyond trade secrecy. There were all kinds of questions, theories, and proposals about whether that would happen under copyright law or perhaps through some software-specific regime. The US answer was clear when "computer program" was written into the scoping definitions of the Copyright Act. We still cite back to the commission that pushed that recommendation, CONTU, when debating loose ends.
- skissane 3y ago
  CONTU wasn't established until 1974, and the US Copyright Act wasn't amended to explicitly affirm the copyrightability of computer programs until 1980 – but the US Copyright Office was already accepting copyright registrations of computer programs by 1972 [0]. While the Copyright Office's interpretation of copyright law is not always affirmed by the Courts or Congress, more often than not it is – so, it would not have been an unreasonable assumption in 1972 that the answer to "Are computer programs copyrightable under US law?" was likely "Yes". I don't know whether the same answer would have been true 3 years earlier or not, but quite possibly it would have been – it is an interesting historical question, when was the first copyright registration for a computer program which they accepted? I also found a journal article [1] which says (p. 1748, my emphasis): > There was considerable debate in the 1960s, during the gestation of the legislation that became the Copyright Act of 1976, about whether computer programs could, or should, be protected by copyright law. Although no one seriously questioned that source code forms of programs could be copyrighted as written texts, there were two principal concerns about applying copyright to machine-executable forms of programs... So, according to that, the debate was primarily about whether object code was copyrightable, as opposed to source code. At the time, distributing software as source code was extremely common – indeed, configuration files were rare, configuration was commonly hardcoded in the source code, making compilation a necessary part of the installation process – which meant that source code being much more clearly copyrightable than object code would have been less of an obstacle to commercial software distribution than it would have been in later decades, when object code only distribution became much more common. [0] Catalog of Copyright Entries. Third Series: 1972: Title Index. Books: July-Dec. page 3926 which lists "CILA Mark-1 system (casualty insurance logistics automated) source program listing. NETWORK DATA PROCESSING CORP" – https://books.google.com/books?id=4kAhAQAAIAAJ&pg=RA1-PA6 https://books.google.com/books?id=4kAhAQAAIAAJ&pg=RA1-PA6 – note there are many other references to "computer programs" in that index, but it is sometimes unclear whether they are manuals or source code; this particular entry is rather clearly source code. [1] Pamela Samuelson, "The Uneasy Case for Software Copyrights Revisited", George Washington Law Review, vol 79 no 6 (September 2011), pp. 1746-1782. https://www.gwlr.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/79-6-Samuelson.pdf https://www.gwlr.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/79-6-Samuels...
ghaff 3y ago
It was very unclear whether software source code could be copyrighted until CONTU recommendations were written into law in the 1970s. This is a major reason why IBM established software licensing for some of the System/360 software.

aldto 3y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CONTU https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CONTU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_copyright#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_copyright#History Strange you don't believe Jon Hall, but willing to believe some random stranger on social media.

skissane 3y ago
> Strange you don't believe Jon Hall, but willing to believe some random stranger on social media. I'm not aware that Jon Hall would claim any particular expertise or interest in legal history, whereas there may well be "some random strangers on social media" who do. Also, this is a matter which can be established by citing sources which Jon Hall might be unfamiliar with (for the simple reason that the topic might never have interested him sufficiently for him to research it.)
- aldto 3y ago
  Fair enough. My apologies.
  - skissane 3y ago
    Thank you for your kind reply, apology gladly accepted :)

kemitchell 3y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_copyright#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_copyright#History I wasn't practicing law back then, but my secondhand understanding is that while it wasn't clear that copyright would apply to software, or how, savvy players largely expected some kind of protection for written software beyond trade secrecy. There were all kinds of questions, theories, and proposals about whether that would happen under copyright law or perhaps through some software-specific regime. The US answer was clear when "computer program" was written into the scoping definitions of the Copyright Act. We still cite back to the commission that pushed that recommendation, CONTU, when debating loose ends.

skissane 3y ago
CONTU wasn't established until 1974, and the US Copyright Act wasn't amended to explicitly affirm the copyrightability of computer programs until 1980 – but the US Copyright Office was already accepting copyright registrations of computer programs by 1972 [0]. While the Copyright Office's interpretation of copyright law is not always affirmed by the Courts or Congress, more often than not it is – so, it would not have been an unreasonable assumption in 1972 that the answer to "Are computer programs copyrightable under US law?" was likely "Yes". I don't know whether the same answer would have been true 3 years earlier or not, but quite possibly it would have been – it is an interesting historical question, when was the first copyright registration for a computer program which they accepted? I also found a journal article [1] which says (p. 1748, my emphasis): > There was considerable debate in the 1960s, during the gestation of the legislation that became the Copyright Act of 1976, about whether computer programs could, or should, be protected by copyright law. Although no one seriously questioned that source code forms of programs could be copyrighted as written texts, there were two principal concerns about applying copyright to machine-executable forms of programs... So, according to that, the debate was primarily about whether object code was copyrightable, as opposed to source code. At the time, distributing software as source code was extremely common – indeed, configuration files were rare, configuration was commonly hardcoded in the source code, making compilation a necessary part of the installation process – which meant that source code being much more clearly copyrightable than object code would have been less of an obstacle to commercial software distribution than it would have been in later decades, when object code only distribution became much more common. [0] Catalog of Copyright Entries. Third Series: 1972: Title Index. Books: July-Dec. page 3926 which lists "CILA Mark-1 system (casualty insurance logistics automated) source program listing. NETWORK DATA PROCESSING CORP" – https://books.google.com/books?id=4kAhAQAAIAAJ&pg=RA1-PA6 https://books.google.com/books?id=4kAhAQAAIAAJ&pg=RA1-PA6 – note there are many other references to "computer programs" in that index, but it is sometimes unclear whether they are manuals or source code; this particular entry is rather clearly source code. [1] Pamela Samuelson, "The Uneasy Case for Software Copyrights Revisited", George Washington Law Review, vol 79 no 6 (September 2011), pp. 1746-1782. https://www.gwlr.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/79-6-Samuelson.pdf https://www.gwlr.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/79-6-Samuels...

ghaff 3y ago

It was very unclear whether software source code could be copyrighted until CONTU recommendations were written into law in the 1970s. This is a major reason why IBM established software licensing for some of the System/360 software.