On Sun, May 04, 2008 at 08:32:43PM +0300, Lars Nood??n wrote:
> Marco Peereboom wrote:
>
> > public domain is not properly defined in the framework of the law.
>
> http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/public_domain/
>
> Public domain is very clearly defined by law: it is the absence of
> copyright. If it's public domain, then you and everyone else can do
> *anything* to it or with it.
The cited document is US only, and does not talk about putting
documents into the public domain by the author at the moment of
publishing. It mostly talks about work becoming public domain after
some period of time after publishing.
-Otto
>
> However, what you were getting at in an earlier post was the difficulty
> in identifying what has or has not entered the public domain.
>
> The purpose of copyright is not what the MPAA/RIAA/MSFTers will have you
> believe. The purpose is "To promote the progress of science and useful
> arts..."
> http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.articlei.html#section8
>
> Given the problems nowadays with the drift and contradictory efforts by
> MS/MPAA/RIAA/Disney Corp and a generally litigious society (at least in
> the US) extra clarification is needed. Hence the licenses. The ISC
> license bootstraps of that promotion of science and useful arts by
> skipping that waiting period and launching the code directly into an
> approximation of the public domain.
>
> -Lars
