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Copyright Violation And Tort


meckr

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Has anyone ever heard of any court case involving one script author using the source code of another author? I have searched and searched. I am trying to find out if the source code can really be copyrighted as copyright law states that functions cannot be copyrighted. As far as I can tell, PHP scripts are nothing more than functions. Also, individual words or phrases cannot be copyrithged either, so that would apply to variables.

The reason I am asking is that I think a script that I wrote was used in another script as part of that script. I have looked at my source and the part of the script that I believe to be mine and they are identicle in every way.

In my java classes, we learned that webpage layouts, Java, Javascript, cannot be copyrighted or even html code. If HTML, Java, Javascript code cannot be copyrighted, then how is that PHP code can be or ASP for that matter? These are all structured languages.

Of course, we all know that some text and all images may be copyrighted in a script, so my question is can the source code legally be copyrighted?

Please provide examples or resources relating to this. Answering this question will benefit us all.

[img src=\"style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/unsure.gif\" style=\"vertical-align:middle\" emoid=\":unsure:\" border=\"0\" alt=\"unsure.gif\" /]

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I never made it open source but I offered it for free download at one time. That was a while back.

My question is does anyone think I could take him/her/them to court and sue them or something. It's a good 700 lines of code and all the variables have been changed on the other author's script. The layout and everything is identical to mine.

Would I have a case or what do you think?
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dude you are totally SOL on that. Even if there were some kind of law(s) protecting you, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to prove it was your code and that they stole it from you. You can't find cases on stuff like that because it's virtually impossible to prove. Instead, i suggest you focus on a) not handing out your script to anybody, if you don't want it used by anybody else, and b) if your script is meant for distribution (commercially or not), encrypt it.
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