BMJ - PKI and signinng slight confusion

[Denis Russell]

At 9:56 pm +0100 13/9/00, John Enser wrote:
>Denis,
>
>No lawyer can resist an invitation to pontificate.
>
>You are right.  Separate ownership of physical and intellectual assets is
>very common - you buy a newspaper, you own the paper, but not the copyright
>in the words on the paper, which are with the newspaper or (occasionally)
>the author, or the copyright in the photographs, which remain with the paper
>or photographer.  You can re-sell the physical object, but you cannot trade
>in the words or pictures separate from the object
...

I understand that, but I thought that this case was slightly 
different. In the case of a newspaper you do indeed buy the physical 
paper, but mainly because you want to be able to read one copy of the 
words on the paper. That's why you buy a *copy* of the paper. You 
only buy one *copy* of the words, and making more than one copy 
violates the copyright. What I thought was being suggested was 
something slightly different. A Doctor apparently doesn't buy his own 
paper, but it is supplied by an external agency, X. The Doctor then 
writes some information onto the paper. The suggestion seemed to be 
that because X owned the paper, that gave them some kind of right to 
whatever might get written on it. That isn't clear to me. It seems to 
me that there should be some kind of ownership of the abstract 
information that is at least in principle separable from the medium 
on which it is recorded. In the case of computer disks, this seems 
clear. I can own my hard disk, but I can accept that some software on 
it is owned by someone else. The act of writing the software on the 
disk doesn't of itself give me any ownership of the information, even 
if the information was put there by the owner of the information.

Writing stuff on paper feels a bit different. I think this is because 
writing on paper is essentially a one-time irreversible operation. 
Once the information is written on the paper, its future (or at least 
the future of that physical *copy* or representation of the abstract 
information) and the paper are bound together: Owner of paper "give 
me my paper back". Owner of information "you can't have the 
information". Owner of paper "but the information is mine now". Owner 
of information "no it isn't"...

I fear that the resolution of this would involve a discussion of the 
intention of the two parties in supplying the paper and using it, but 
in principle I think the situation should be one of separation of 
ownership as in the case of the disk drive.

	Denis