Louis-Philippe Véronneau - copyrighthttps://veronneau.org/2018-12-29T00:00:00-05:00From Cooperation to Competition or How Code Became Proprietary2018-12-29T00:00:00-05:002018-12-29T00:00:00-05:00Louis-Philippe Véronneautag:veronneau.org,2018-12-29:/from-cooperation-to-competition-or-how-code-became-proprietary.html<p>After two semesters of hard work, I'm happy to say I've finished all the classes
I had to take for my Master's degree. If I work hard enough, I should be able to
finish writing my thesis by the end of August.</p>
<p>Last night, I handed out the final paper …</p><p>After two semesters of hard work, I'm happy to say I've finished all the classes
I had to take for my Master's degree. If I work hard enough, I should be able to
finish writing my thesis by the end of August.</p>
<p>Last night, I handed out the final paper for my <em>History of the Economic
Thought</em> class. Titled "From Cooperation to Competition or How Code Became
Proprietary", it is a research paper on the evolution of the Copyright Law in
the United States with regards to computer code.</p>
<p>Here's the abstract:</p>
<hr>
<p>With the emergence of computer science as a academic research domain in the 60s,
a new generation of students gain access to computers. This generation will
become the first wave of hackers, a community based on a strong ethos promoting
curiosity and knowledge sharing. The hazy legal framework of computer code
intellectual property at the time enables this community to grow and to put
forward cooperation as a mean of economic production. Meanwhile in the 60s, the
American politicians take advantage of the revision of the <em>Copyright Act</em> to
think about the implications of applying copyright to computer code. After
failing to tackle computer issues in the 1976 revision of the <em>Copyright Act</em>,
the Senate creates the Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works
(CONTU). The final report of the CONTU will eventually lead computer code to be
recognised as a literary work and thus copyrightable. A few years later,
American courts finally create a strong case law on these issues with the 1983
Apple v. Franklin court case.</p>
<hr>
<p>Sadly, I haven't had time to translate the whole paper to English yet (it's in
French). Maybe if enough people are interested by theses issues I'll take the
time to do so.</p>
<p>If you want to read my paper in French, you can download the PDF <a href="https://veronneau.org/media/blog/2018-12-29/paper.pdf">here</a>.</p>