I agree: notice and notice is a much better system. If only we also had safe harbour to go with it.

You're right about the distribution issue (which I hadn't thought of). A great deal of graduate computer science work involves building proof of concept applications. IANAL either, but it seems to me that that sort of activity would be a legal minefield (who can you distribute the apps to?) for grad students.

Thanks again for the timely and well written letter to start from