Paul Koning wrote: > >> As I mentioned in other posts, IMO (IANAL) the copyright in > >> unimportant and probably unenforceable. The National Computing > >> Centre no longer exists, and the document was also published by NIST > >> which, as part of the US government, does not copyright its > >> publications. > > > > In the United States. It is generally assumed that the > > U.S. government can claim copyright on its works abroad. > > Really? That's puzzling. It's my understanding that works of the > United States are, by law, in the public domain.
Yes, but what are "works of the United States"? 17 USC 105 specifically says that the government "is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment". If a Federal employee creates a work as part of their duties, that work cannot be copyrighted. But if the government hires a contractor to create a work and that contractor transfers their copyright of the work to the government, that work *is* copyrighted by the US. So the criteria isn't whether it was created in the US or abroad, but whether it was created by employees or contractors and, in the latter case, whether the contractor copyrighted the work or not.
