[LINK] Beechwood homes and IP

[Craig Sanders]

On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 08:21:03AM +1000, Brendan Scott wrote:
> In theory if they've paid for the plans, then they probably have a
> licence to use them to build the house to which the plans relate.

nice in theory, but there are numerous counter-examples of people
ordering and paying for goods from companies which go bankrupt before
they deliver them who are then unable to get possession of the goods
they paid for. they're treated as an unsecured creditor and get nothing.

the same is true of people who store their own property at the premises
of a company that subsequently goes bankrupt - e.g. installing your own
server at co-location facility. the bankrupt company has posession, so
it's treated as their property, so can be sold to pay creditors - or
simply disposed of because it's too much trouble for the receiver to
bother to return it to the owners.

of course, in both cases, your chances of getting your property greatly
improve if you're a huge corporation with lawyers.

fat chance if you're an ordinary consumer.

> The problems are these: first, that there has been so much propaganda
> about copyright over the last 20 years that third parties are now
> scared of honouring that licence; and second the legislature has so
> inflated the consequences of copyright infringement that being wrong
> results in a disproportionate penalty.

true.

craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>

"The fundamentalists deny that evolution has taken place; they deny that
 the earth and the universe as a whole are more than a few thousand years
 old, and so on. There is ample scientific evidence that the fundamentalists
 are wrong in these matters, and that their notions of cosmogony have about
 as much basis in fact as the Tooth Fairy has."
          [Isaac Asimov, quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief,
           Famous People with the Courage to Doubt", by
           James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996]