Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Busby permission

[John Brownlee <jonnie@cobweb.scarymonsters.net>]

	The bottom line in all this is that the copyright issues -aren't-
clear. Whoever reproduces or publishes this should be very wary about it,
in the best of all worlds having both the Navy and the Busbys' blessing.
	An important factor will be the idea of copyright authorship vs.
credited author. Though I am the credited author on a lot of documents for
the space program, NASA is the copyright author for legal purposes. They
can sell those rights, lease them and give me nary a cent, but they
ethically must put my name on the work. So the name on the front of a
government publication may or may not be the copyright holder, but is
definitely the guy you want to be crediting in any future or derivative
work. If you want to shut down a conversation about intellectual property
(IP is my livelihood too) start calling people thieves and saying they are
taking things that aren't theirs. Often times the other side could
conceivably say the same thing back to you. On the one side, there is no
doubt who wrote and orchestrated the book's creation - on the other,
people who feel that works paid for by the aggregate of the people in the
USA should belong to those same people as is often the case.

	I don't know who's right.

	Also, I understood that the Navy wanted the publication available
but couldn't justify the cost of another round of printing. Their interest
was in providing a cost-free means of making the book available so that
the printing cost vs. volume demanded ratio would approach zero. In their
mind, then, everyone wins.
	I have my own copy of Busby. More than anything I'd just like to
see the work available in some modernized form in the near future. After
years of working around government and private copyright issues, I'm just
not interested in injecting this back in to my own leisure hours.
Regardless, this issue will not be decided on an email list. Perhaps Phil,
you know what sort of ETA on the new edition is in the works? Is this back
burner, or back-back burner?

					Good luck to everyone,

							John

John Brownlee
Chief Systems Administrator
Scary Monsters Network
jonnie at scarymonsters dot net