discuss: Getting Linux Help HOWTO -- revised
Subject:
Re: Getting Linux Help HOWTO -- revised
From:
Rick Moen ####@####.####
Date:
24 Jun 2004 04:10:57 -0000
Message-Id: <20040624041046.GF2140@linuxmafia.com>
Quoting Greg Porter ####@####.####
> I'm not sure of the best way to do this, but it's possible if you don't
> preserve the copyright, some malicious person could rip your whole doc
> off and say it was public domain.
1. Ever since ratification of the Berne Convention on Copyrights (1970s),
copyright title vests with the creator automatically at the moment
you create a work. It's no longer legally necessary to attach
a copyright notice, just to protect your ownership interest.
2. It's always, even before the Berne Convention, been possible for
someone to strip attribution and try to deny your ownership. It's
also always been extremely unlawful. If you think the (draconian
and problematic) immutable-text provisions of the GNU FDL -- a
really rather awful licence -- are necessary just to protect your
attributions and terms of usage from being stripped, you are very
badly mistaken. Doing that under any other licence, open source
or proprietary, would be equally unlawful.
3. The notion that works without copyright notices and licences are
"public domain" is widespread -- and dead wrong. In fact (citing
USA law for a the next clause; apologies to people in the other 180+
jurisdictions) except for works created directly by the US Federal
government as opposed to contractors working for it, _zero_ works[1]
in the last couple of generations' lifetimes has been or become
public domain.
Further info:
"Public Domain" on http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Licensing_and_Law
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/proprietary.html (unfinished)
US statutes:
Right of attribution: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/106A.html
Government creations: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/105.html
Vesting of title at creation: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/102.html
--
Cheers, "Don't use Outlook. Outlook is really just a security
Rick Moen hole with a small e-mail client attached to it."
####@####.#### -- Brian Trosko in r.a.sf.w.r-j
