Matt Palmer

Hi,

your tutorial site is nice, but what you say about copyright law in the
javascript security tutorial is wrong.   You are confusing copyright with
patent law.  You say:

> Oh dear. This is just not possible. Many people make futile attempts to do
> so, but to be honest, there is no point in trying. In fact, in many
> developers' opinions, there is no such thing as copyright with JavaScript,
> although it is theoretically possible.

*Matt's comments: You automatically own the copyright to any work written by
you.  Whether you can realistically enforce it or not is another matter!*

> The point with copyright is that you can only copyright something
> completely new, a new innovation, something that has not been done before.
> You can almost guarantee that nothing you do with JavaScript will be a new
> innovation. *Someone* will have done it before.

*Matt's comments:  copyright has nothing to do with whether it relates to
something that has been done before (patents do, though).  It is about your
particular, unique expression of the thing.  Even if it does something done
before, you still own copyright in your expression of that thing. *

>  JavaScript is just not designed for innovative programming.

*Matt's comments: nothing about Javascript stops you being innovative -**it's
a remarkably capable language.** (this has nothing to do with law anyway!).*

> Even if you write something in a 'new' way, it will still be doing
> something that has already been done, and if you did attempt to take things
> too far and take the matter to court, you would just be laughed back out of
> it again."

*Matt's comments: You are completely confusing copyright with patents here.
If you went to court with that kind of confusion, you would definitely be
laughed out of it!*

The bottom line is:

   - Patents are about how things are done.  If someone patents a method
   for doing something, and you somehow replicate that method - even if the
   code you wrote to do it was different and you never heard of the patent, you
   are legally infringing the patent. Patents are all about what the code is
   doing, not the specific lines of code to do it.  Patents have to be
   registered with the patent office in each country - they are not automatic.
   - Copyright is all about the specific lines of code you write - your
   particular expression of an idea, whether the idea is yours or someone
   else's.  As the author, you have it automatically, although whether you can
   prove that specific code was originally yours, or can realistically enforce
   it if someone copies your code without your permission is entirely another
   matter!

Regards,

Matt.

Hi Tarquin,

I accept that most developers probably don't really care much about all of
this.  But in any case, the real issue is that it's not
*technologically *possible
to prevent people looking at the javascript source code - but they are
definitely *legally *protected against illegal copying.  So why give out
completely wrong legal information when the issue isn't a legal one anyway?
Since developers do own copyright in their code, they can make money
creating cool client-side javascript. They have legal protection!  Just not
technological protection.

Oh well, just trying to be helpful :)

cheers,

Matt