On Wed, 17 Feb 1999, Anthony Towns wrote: > On Tue, Feb 16, 1999 at 08:15:15PM -0600, John Hasler wrote: > > > a work that is public domain has no copyright. a work that has no > > > copyright is public domain. > > And nothing you do can change that. > > Okay, this is getting pointless. > > If anyone has references to statutes, judgements or other informed > opinions that clarfiy the matter, please point them out. Otherwise it's > about time we just admit "We're not lawyers, we don't know" and either > move on, or ask someone who is.
I did. I spoke to an in-house lawyer at a software company, who does a lot of copyright work. According to him: i) 'in the public domain' is a phrase normally used of information, not copyrightable material. As applied to software, a court would likely interpret it as giving unrestricted permission to copy. ii) Something which you have acquired from someone else is still their copyright unless they explicitly signed it over to you. Irrespective of how lax their license, you can never re-license it, in the sense that you can never restrict how others copy it - it's simply not your copyright. iii) If you have contributed some additional work of your own, then the new work has combined copyright. Whether someone can 'unpick' your work and resdistribute the original depends on the particular case. If they did succeed, they'd be able to distribute under the terms of the original work, not your terms. Jules /----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------\ | Jelibean aka | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | 6 Evelyn Rd | | Jules aka | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Richmond, Surrey | | Julian Bean | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | TW9 2TF *UK* | +----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------+ | War doesn't demonstrate who's right... just who's left. | | When privacy is outlawed... only the outlaws have privacy. | \----------------------------------------------------------------------/
